The Aftereffects Of SunEdison’s Bankruptcy

After filing for bankruptcy almost a week ago, the fallout from SunEdison’s spectacular financial crash has begun to become apparent.

After over a year of stunning financial misbehavior, SunEdison filed for bankruptcy last week — the first really big renewable energy company to run into such trouble. Since then, reports have been slowly filtering through of the aftereffects SunEdison’s bankruptcy has had on the industry at large.

According to Mark Osborne at PV-Tech, SunEdison owes its upstream suppliers more than $321 million, according to papers filed by the company with the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. Specifically, according to Osborne:

“Primarily a fabless company, SunEdison has been trading some in-house polysilicon and wafer production with producers of solar cells and modules via outsourcing that would ultimately be used in its downstream PV power plant projects.”

At the same time, nonprofit solar installer Grid Alternatives filed a lawsuit against the SunEdison Foundation, filing for nearly $2.3 million in unpaid donations. According to Erika Mackie, Grid Alternatives founder and CEO, quoted by Greentech Media, the move comes as a means to ensure that the nonprofit’s work can continue unaffected.

“We want to do everything we can to make sure the low-income families we serve and job trainees we train continue to have access to solar and solar jobs,” she said. “This [lawsuit] is one part of making sure we’re good stewards of our mission.”

UK-based green energy company Ecotricity announced prior to SunEdison’s bankruptcy filing that it had acquired SunEdison’s UK residential solar rooftop program, Energy Saver Plan.

It has also been reported that SunEdison is selling over 200 MW of its Chilean assets to power company Colbun, for an undisclosed amount. SunEdison and Colbun also signed a contract in which SunEdison will build a 100 MW solar power plant, which Colbun hopes will provide 200 GWh per year of solar energy over 15 years.