Two more solar companies have filed for bankruptcy, Q-Cells and Solar Trust.
Q-Cells, once the largest solar cell maker in the world, helped usher in the solar industry in Germany. The company, which has been heaving under the weight of low-cost Chinese manufacturers for the last few years, and now severe subsidy cuts, says it will attempt to restructure.
At its peak in 2008, Q-Cell’s stock reach $150 – now it’s $0.16.
The company has been trying hard to reduce costs and diversify its business into project development and into both PV and thin-fillm solar cells.
The other company to go bankrupt is Solar Trust of America, the developer of the world’s largest solar project, the 1,000 megawatt (MW) Blythe project in California.
When its parent company Solar Millennium, filed for bankruptcy in December, Solar Trust said it would continue. But with so many project development costs, it couldn’t go on without funding from Solar Millennium.
Another casualty of very low solar PV prices, Blythe, which was originally planned as a solar concentrating plant, changed to a solar PV plant because prices were so much lower.
Solar Trust has some 2,000 MW of projects in advanced stages of permitting in California and Nevada. It’s likely that a buyer will step in.
Last December, Solon, Germany’s first publicly traded solar company, going public in 1998, filed for bankruptcy. Another early leader, Evergreen Solar, and SpectraWatt also filed last year.
Here are more details on Solar Trust and the Blythe project:
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There are so many solar opportunities in the United States. Those opportunities will create jobs and revenue for the U.S. We need to spearhead a program to develop more affordable solar panels here and limit the competition with China!
As of 1 day ago I worked at the project in blythe. This project is a real solution to the green energy shortage I believe if obamma wants this to work he needs to make it a government funded project, enough with the private sector and the country can run the plant and reap the profits.
Sustainable energy is the way of the future, but unsustainable business practices, wasted taxpayer money, and forced market creation is not something to be proud of. Sustainability is not just for critical energy needs, its critical for these businesses to get their act together before they get more funding.