Comments on: Solyndra Facts & Lies

By: 100,000 MW of Enhanced Geothermal in 50 Years in US? - CleanTechnica

100,000 MW of Enhanced Geothermal in 50 Years in US? - CleanTechnica — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 09:17:25 +0000

[…] geothermal infrastructure is $800 million to $1 billion over a fifteen-year period. (What did Solyndra cost — $535 million?) Solar and wind are intermittent power sources, though storage systems […]

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 19:39:00 +0000

I’m pretty sure that after the DOE guaranteed the loan to Solyndra another part of the federal government provided the actual loan.

By: Alamantra

Alamantra — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 19:25:00 +0000

In the real world, what is at issue is not one stimulus loan gone bad. Rather, what should be the focus is how quickly the Chinese are taking over the solar market. Germany just stopped subsidizing their own solar manufacturing because they can’t match China’s prices. This is what brought Solyndra down, and had it been strictly a private capital venture with no stimulus, the results would have been the same.
The second part of this is that the way this has been presented by the Conservative/Corporate cabal is disingenuous. They portray this as if Obama took 535 million dollars out of the bank and handed it to Solyndra. A loan guarantee is not the same thing as a loan. We need the government to fund research and risk taking in the solar industry as well as other renewable energy sources, because big business won’t touch it until the American people have assumed all the risk and made it happen. This is what they’ve always done because they are vultures. Before there were giant aircraft manufacturing moguls, there had to be the Wright Brothers. Fossil fuels WILL run out, and once developed, renewable energy will be CHEAP and ENDLESS. Of course the corporate people don’t want to have to give up huge profits on a limited and controlled commodity to retool and reinvest in a commodity that will be cheap and plentiful …They won’t be able to make as much money. However, one can hope that they will eventually realize that they will be tapping into an ENDLESS cash flow even if the monthly revenues won’t be as much, and that the economy itself will reorganize itself around it, and new unforeseen technologies and applications will emerge as a result. It is the seed for another economic surge.

By: Action: GOP doubles down on screwing Detroit, hybrid cars – Red, Green, and Blue

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 01:06:51 +0000

[…] Boehner doubled down. He’s keeping the “screw Detroit” provision, adding a “Remind them that Solyndra failed” provision, and is strong-arming the Tea Partiers who voted against the measure […]

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 08:57:00 +0000

The *tragedy of the commons* is a dilemma arising from the situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource, even when it is clear that it is not in anyone’s long-term interest for this to happen. This dilemma was first described in an influential article titled “The Tragedy of the Commons,” written by ecologist Garrett Hardin and first published in the journal *Science* in 1968.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

By: Libertarianguy

Libertarianguy — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 02:10:00 +0000

Government investments sometimes pay off. Sometimes they don’t, like here. I’d argue that government loans are often more politically oriented than economically oriented, but that isn’t even the point. Who is to say that someone else knows how to spend MY money on me better than I do?

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:36:00 +0000

More non-sense politics while our country falls apart and the corporate mega media on a leash.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 10:12:00 +0000

are you kidding? if the U.S. had grown under that ideology we’d be a 3rd world country.

and how is 1 investment failing out of thousands indication that the U.S. is a bad investor?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 10:10:00 +0000

As Htuttle said, there is no positive outcome that could come from testifying before this witch hunt committee. their lawyer said nobody with common sense would do so, as if you needed him to tell you that.

as for Dr. Phil, are you speaking of Phil Jones, who has been cleared of any wrongdoings by about 7 independent investigations now?!

witch hunts are witch hunts. don’t confuse them with patriotism.

By: Htuttle

Htuttle — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 07:16:00 +0000

@FHayek, does your fantasy land also not include lawsuits? Why would an executive want to testify before a witch-hunt committee? All your hate must be real healthy for you.

By: Htuttle

Htuttle — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 07:12:00 +0000

@FHayek, go back to your fantasy land where governments don’t “invest” in private companies.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 01:36:00 +0000

Whatever. This is why the federal government has no business “investing” in private businesses. If those dopes who work in the federal bureaucracy were so smart they wouldn’t be … well …. you get the point.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 01:35:00 +0000

I suppose the omission of these “key facts” explains why Solyndra senior management has decided to take the Fifth in their testimony to Congress later this week. Its perfectly fitting that these parasites living off of U.S. taxpayers will join the list of others who have asserted the same right before Congress through the years – murderers and other organized crime figures, Communists, various tax evaders, fundraisers for Bill Clinton, other notorious charlatans like Dr. Phil, etc.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 20:10:00 +0000

Nice. Thanks.

The whole ‘scandal’ part of it is ridiculous. This truly a could-have-been company.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 20:05:00 +0000

Let me copy over a comment posted on GMT…

“As for the loan to Solyndra’s size, it was definitely a “go big or go home” kind of thing. We knew that we could only compete with First Solar and the Chinese if we had a big automated factory. We’d already long since proven the technology, shipping multiple MW of commercial panels before the loan came through. What we needed was scale. $50 million simply wouldn’t do anything, and the guys leading the company said to potential investors quite clearly, “if you can’t give us half a billion, don’t give us anything.” Maybe people were foolish to put so much money into one company. Maybe the government was foolish to give any money at all for such a late stage in the Research -> Product development chain (though that’s why they thought the loan wasn’t super high-risk). Maybe lots of things.

But the Solyndra people were quite clear that they needed a lot of money because the whole system only worked if it were relatively big, given how much automation was needed and how much staff had to be supported by panel sales. Then the price of flat panels dropped precipitously and the amount of solar we could sell dropped, making it harder to reduce our costs as fast and leaving our overhead as a bigger drag. It became a vicious cycle, but we were skating quite close to becoming cash-flow positive for quite a while. We just couldn’t keep up with endless drops in regular solar panel prices (didn’t GTM report a 40% drop already this year?).

The Solyndra panels were good and 100% American made, but just a little too pricey. Since energy is largely a commodity business, small differences in price can absolutely kill anyone. All the models that were used in 2008 (when panels alone cost nearly $4/W) had panel prices not going below $2/W until 2012. With that expectation, it made perfect sense to loan Solyndra lots of cash. If competing solar panels had *only* halved in price by this year, Solyndra would be minting money and unable to keep up with demand.”

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/solyndras-loan-guarantee-vs.-military-boondoggles/