Solyndra for Dummies
September 9th, 2011 - 2:01 pm
Confused by the Solyndra scandal?
This five-panel cartoon explains it in terms everybody can understand:
Solyndra for Dummies
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(Credit: Art and lettering by buzzsawmonkey; Concept by zombie)
Here’s the same cartoon laid out old-school newspaper-style; click to enlarge:
Very well done both of you. Good idea and great art.
Excellent… ( ace sent me : ) )
Right on the money! Love how slimy the lobbyist looks. You’d think with all that money he could dress more tastefully. Buzz, you are truly multi-talented.
Lobbyist dressed like a used car salesman. Would you buy a used car from this man? Probably has penny loafers and a white belt.
You draw too? I’m slowly moving from admiring to downright jealous. I keed. I like how the banker looks like the Monopoly money banker. Obama’s horse teeth are a nice touch too.
Excellent work, zombie and Buzzsawmonkey!
Buzz, you really are a renaissance man! Excellent, and thanks to Zombie for the concept.
Nice work, except you left out the critical fact that the entire affair prevented not one molecule of carbon from being released into the atmosphere.
I can’t believe I’m the first commenter to say raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacist.
You just admitted that you are stupid? Way to go!
I think Greg was being sarcastic.
Brilliant cartoon. Keep doing them!
Hey! Look! Lobbyists, unions and the donkey got stimulated! It’s a jobs program!
Lots of employment opportunities were created for all the lawyers who have to handle the bankruptcy proceedings, sue Solyndra for laying off the workers without severance packages, handle the Congressional investigations of the participants, etc.
In fact, lawyers and bureaucrats are the primary beneficiaries of all of Obama’s stimulus programs.
See that? Bankruptcy stimulates the economy just like unemployment benefits and food stamps! All we need are more, more, MORE bankruptcies and we’ll be on the road to recovery!
The Broken Business theory of economics.
Awesome! And BUZZ! Gee, you think you KNOW somebody. ; ) Did NOT know you could do that!
and in related news, when Obama thought everything Green is Good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lVKTmLMV_M&feature=player_embedded.
How soon before it is pulled from the Web?
It’s a big money laundering operation. Basically the government has taken all the money.
No, if the government got the money, then WE would have the money. Its all in big deep private pockets.
Where do you suggest the $535m came from to begin with???
Panel #1 needs a label on the bag of money:
“Campaign Donations”
Vim Toot!
We thought about doing that, but decided it was too many syllables for the “Dummies” for whom this was intended. So we conveyed the same concept with “2008″ on the podium.
I see your point about a little ambiguity in the first frame.
But overall what a great cartoon, big thanks to both z and bsm!
(bsm – who knew?!!!)
The juxtaposition of a quite nice rendering of Obama and something reminiscent of Mr. Monopoly Moneybags, is verrry powerful. Zoot suited lobbyist – hey everyone even Mr. Taxpayer is very 1930s style, ain’t they? Appropriate.
Hope to see more.
Very nice, but one suggestion: in the first panel, the arm in which Obama displays a pointed finger should be straight in the air, in order to convey more of the flavor of the messianic, proclamation-from-Mount-Sinai tone of his “soaring” oratory, the nonsense that swayed so many idiot Americans.
…ah, reamnewable energy begins to inspire the subversive mind of the Toonist!
it really is that simple. a tad unfair to portray obama as comprehending the process…i guess it was that ‘no excecutive experience’ combined with the history of outsourcing programs to the largest group of leeches he could find.
stunning that they could burn thorugh that much money that quickly. just wondering how much the lobbyist got. heck, if they can shake down the govt and get away with it, they earned their money.
still, it makes me long for the good old days, when franklin rains and jamie gorelick were given multi-million dollar bonuses to destroy our housing market.
if people didn’t figure that one out, i tend to doubt that this will have any more traction. alternate consideration of the wh/holder pursuing criminal investigations is even less likely, given the fact that he still has a job, and the potus hasn’t fielded ‘one’ question on the atf gunwalking program.
remember cheney and his haliburton ties?
he only got 8 million, in 2 million dollar lump sums, over 4 years, after he divested.
wonder what the dems are capable of for 535 million.
wonder what the dems are capable of for 535 million
Well, it does kinda strike odd that ‘solyndra’ sounds so much like ‘soylent’
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anyhoo,
…more toons, these from GD1 (great Depres…oh, you know). Including from Carey Orr, of the 1930s Chicago Trib, who drew that great one circulating the web a couple years ago, of the donkey-drawn wagon-load of party-time ivy-leaguers throwing all the money out the wagon.
Buzzsaw and Zombie,
There have been so many articles written about Solyndra in the last few weeks, it’s impossible to respond to them all … I’m choosing this one because you’ve skillfully employed cartoons, which will get people’s attention. You suggest that your intent is to help those of us who are confused to understand what happened at Solyndra. Unfortunately, this post won’t accomplish that, but I’m here to help.
If your goal is to knowingly spread fear, uncertainty and doubt for political gains, good work! If you’re interested in what happened, please spend more time researching and talking to people who were actually there, after which you will most likely want to redraw your cartoon to include a different cast of characters. I’m a recently unemployed ex-Solyndrian who was chasing a dream for America, and I’d like to share some facts to help you get started:
FACT 1: There were 2 full time Solyndra employees in DC, one of whom could be called a lobbyist … both are out of a job. Unfortunately, Solyndra didn’t have the budget to more effectively combat entrenched special interests on Capitol Hill. The entire solar industry doesn’t have the budget for that. There were no unions supporting Solyndra, so I’m not sure where you got that idea from. When appropriate, solar projects employ IBEW workers, but they’re expensive and don’t always get the bid. As far as anyone can find, No politicians were paid any significant amount of money due to Solyndra. (Please don’t reply with a reference George Kaiser’s $50k donation to Obama … he’s a Billionaire philanthropist. That’s the equivalent of you giving me a piece of gum.)
So … who’s left collecting the bag of money? Hard working Solyndra employees, all of whom paid federal and state income taxes on their earnings.
FACT 2: Solyndra’s unique and innovative approach to solar panel manufacturing (which was only possible here in the USA) resulted in energy generated at a cost below grid parity for it’s customers. (Yes, this included the 30% FITC, FITs or SRECs that all solar technologies benefit from) The unique combination of reduced installation times, balance of systems savings and building friendliness carved out a segment of the PV market that is not easily addressable with cheap silicon, or any other technology. READ: it was more resilient to foreign competition and was VERY close to sustaining thousands of American jobs.
FACT 3: Major solar industry players and Fortune 500 companies like Coca-Cola, Pfizer, Anheuser Busch and Frito Lay have embraced Solyndra’s technology and are currently benefiting from it. @Greg – You’ll be happy to know that Solyndra shipped well over 100 MW of panels, all of which are still working their hardest to save your “atmosphere”.
FACT 4: Solyndra’s loan represents less than 5% of the DOE’s investment through the loan guarantee program. Our country has always taken a portfolio approach to such things. Some win, some lose … the portfolio hopefully wins.
FACT 5: Solyndra was the only one of ~40 recipients of the DOE’s loan guarantee program to get a personal visit from Obama, who just happened to be in town for a pre-existing agenda. The resulting press created by Rep. Stearns’ investigation created a SERIOUS business disruption for Solyndra over the past few months at the worst possible time. 1100 people in CA are out of jobs, the US economy lost $150M in annual supply chain revenue from Solyndra, the DOE’s loan guarantee program has been soiled and the hopes of a US renewable energy manufacturing economy are farther away than ever. (This part is not fact: I’m guessing that if Solyndra could take a do over, they would have told Obama not to come.)
FACT 6: For what it’s worth, Solyndra scaled a state of the art facility in one year that manufactured roughly the equivalent volume of thin films as the global 300mm semiconductor industry. That’s no small task. Solyndra had the ONLY solar panel in the industry designed from the ground up to specifically (and locally) address the 50% of America’s energy usage from commercial and Industrial buildings. Each year alone, Solyndra could have sold 10x it’s manufacturing capacity if the product was ONLY installed on new energy saving “cool roofs” here in the US, something energy secretary Chu is very much in support of. They were still hiring marketing and sales … solar panels don’t sell themselves.
FACT 7: Building Solyndra’s factory created 3,000 jobs and was one of the largest construction projects in the state of California when the construction industry was at it’s lowest in decades. Solyndra exported millions to European customers, was one of the largest customers of the port of Oakland, CA and the installations of it’s panels created hundreds of jobs worldwide. All gone.
FACT 8: No global scale manufacturing effort gets off the ground any quicker. The solar panel companies from China that are currently dominating the industry have 10 years of history developing their operations, use technology that’s decades old, and have taken billions each in government investments. The Chinese people don’t appear to be complaining about renewable energy, they’re embracing it. Americans could learn from that.
FACT 9: Expectations of the investors were unfortunately not in line with reality here, which is obviously the fault of two generations of Solyndra leadership. That said, could anyone have predicted the intersection of $10′s of Billions in Chinese government investment with a global financial crisis that bankrupts European countries and results in the reduction of Feed in Tariffs?
FACT 10: Solyndra still holds $800+ Billion in assets, which you can read about from many sources in recent media. Those assets are mostly a LEED Gold facility, several other currently empty buildings and specialized tools for manufacturing the panels. It remains to be seen who ends up controlling them and how much money is returned to the investors and the US taxpayer.
Thankfully, the FBI is onsite collecting information. The remaining Solyndra employees are doing their best to find a buyer for the remaining assets. I humbly request that you hold off on future attacks until that transaction is completed and the actual facts are known. It’s entirely possible that the only people to lose anything here will be the aforementioned hardworking employees of Solyndra, many of whom will end up working for a better funded foreign company in the solar industry.
Tomorrow is the 10th anniversary of 9/11. By now, we all know that the reason we are at war in the middle east is to fuel our oil starved industrial economy. Solar energy is one of many solutions that will eventually help wean us onto a more sustainable energy infrastructure, which will protect our national security, reduce the percentage of your taxpayer dollars spent on war and improve the quality of the air we breathe. I’m pretty sure those are all good things … which the expiration of Solyndra delays.
Dude, there’s no point in publishing a sales brochure to promote how wonderful Solyndra is, AFTER the company has already gone out of business. A little late for all this rah-rah cheerleading, don’t you think?
Businesses succeed or fail on their own merits. If Solyndra was a viable economic model, it’d be making a profit now. Unfortunately for you and your promotional advertising above, reality trumps fantasy: Solyndra crashed and burned, despite how promising it might have seemed to investors.
No one’s bashing the solar industry in general here…hey, we’d all love to stop sending our money to the Saudis…but facts is facts and Solyndra combined with all the existing solar panel companies in America could not supply anywhere near all of our current energy needs, at current efficiencies.
It ought not to be the government’s role to interfere in markets, to the benefit of one company over others. Adam Smith’s invisible hand is what guides the winners and losers, even despite the Feds’ interference.
Solyndra was great, yadda yadda yadda. If you still believe all that, then invest $535 million of your OWN money in the company. If you’re right, then you’ll make a bundle and I’ll be singing the blues.
One analyst said: Solyndra spends $6 manufacturing each unit, then sells it for $3, while the Chinese are selling something equivalent for $1.50, which they made for 75¢. Sound like a viable business model to you?
“Solyndra still holds $800+ Billion in assets…”
so…off of a 535 million dollar investment, you managed to scrape together 800 billion of capital?
gosh, we sell that stuff off, and we cut the deficit in half.
“The Chinese people don’t appear to be complaining about renewable energy, they’re embracing it. Americans could learn from that.”
aside from the first, obvious consideration, of whether it was possible compete in manufacturing with the chinese, it sounds like a ‘lot of thought’ went into this, along with 535 million.
things we could learn from the chinese…
for starters, they aren’t embracing renewable energy. they are embracing the idea that they could make more money of what amounts to an environmental fetish, than the us govt.
while i am no fan of the epa, the other end of the spectrum is the chinese energy production, by ‘any means necessary’.
why beat around the bush…
ge produces their solar panels, in china.
one would think that immelt could have informed the president that if he wanted production, he should have gone to china.
oops.
“The resulting press created by Rep. Stearns’ investigation created a SERIOUS business disruption for Solyndra over the past few months at the worst possible time.”
I can feel a new talking point being born. Liberals to whom I mention Solyndra either quickly change the subject or mumble something about some secret Republican boycott. But here in the Stearns comment I sense the makings of a five-part NYT investigation.
Gosh, if Solyndra was so innovative, so beloved by the Europeans and Fortune 500 companies, so effective getting a major manufacturing facility quickly built in regulation-heavy California…well, I’m befuddled. Why exactly are they going bankrupt?
The main reason is that they lost money with each sale — the cost of manufacturing each item was higher than the sale price.
Thank God the Chinese took all their customers — if Solyndra had sold any more solar panels, then they REALLY would have started losing money.
Like the old saying goes: We lose money with each transaction, but we make up for it in volume!
The most optimistic view is that Solyndra was hoping to remake itself into a kind of government co-owned statist consortium like Airbus. But solar panels aren’t anywhere near the complexity of building a modern passenger or cargo aircraft; so, although one wheezing statist dinosaur can compete against another on the scale of aircraft, there’s no way that Solyndra was going to compete against China on labor costs. Simply isn’t going to happen. Which is why GE manufactures many of their products in China.
No, the prevailing cynical view is that the $535M was parachute money. Solyndra executives no doubt realized that they were participating in a con — which is why the FBI and others are diligently rooting through their trash looking for evidence — and Obama was a willing participant. Democrats were so desperate to show progress on their ridiculous green energy policies that they ignored common sense. It sickens me to think that our tax dollars were used for this fraud.
CNN reporter interviews (Mother of a gangbanger convicted and sentenced to 7 life sentences) …. Errr…. Ex-Solyndra employee outside the plant:
“Do you have any comment about the Verdict ?”
Ex-Solyndrian: “Mah Baby ‘Din Do Nuffin ! “
The reference to “Solyndra still holds $800+ Billion in assets” caught my eye, but it soon became apparent that it was a typo. He apparently meant, “Solyndra still holds $800 – 1Billion in assets” . It says a lot about a reader when he makes a case on what are obviously oversights or typos.
You’ve gotta be kidding. Where TF did that half billion go?
You wouldn’t happen to post at a certain blog under the nic “Ludwig van Quixote”, by any chance?
If it were any other business, they’d still be trying to get the building permits after a year. With all the nasty heavy metals and whatnot used, why wasn’t there a multiyear environmental impact study like normal businesses have to do before they break ground?
Jeez…tough room. Nobody is showing the Solyndra guy very much sympathy. Almost seems like we’ve been conditioned or somethin’. Reminds me of the opening scenes of The Wild Bunch where the railroad station manager has the clerk by the ear and is saying, “It ain’t what you intended to do –it’s what you DID do!”
I missed this gut-buster:
As Maxwell Smart used to say: “missed it by that much…”
The fact that it cost $6 to make a $2-$1.5 part might have done them in…
Like Zombie said ^^^. They lose money on every sale, but make up for it in volume. What could ever go wrong with a business plan like that?
So, Ex-Solyndrian, got paid in options and can’t give them away?
All you liberals including Odumbo need to stop messing with solar.wind energy and let us develop our own Oil and Gas resources . Instead of buying from the liberal bankrollering Arabs . Muslim criminals in white house and congress , Racist bunch of fools .
So simple, a president can understand it.
But, I thought it was all about saving the planet from Glow-ball Warming.
Buddy – Thanks for the wee bit of sympathy. I’m certainly not looking for it, but I am shocked by the tone of these replies. It is funny how a company that tries to invent a technology, employ Americans and generate clean electricity is suddenly the antichrist because it failed. I’m not sure how, but we are most certainly conditioned. People love to mock the failure of others … sick, but true. In this particular case, the fear of failure helped to realize it. Racing drivers have a saying that “you go where you look” … very true.
Mark – Sorry for the typo … Obviously I meant 800+ Million. As for the rest of your post … I’m not sure there was a point there that I can respond to. It sounds like you’ve given up on a manufacturing economy for the US. While sad, you’re probably right … I’m coming around to your way of thinking very quickly here. Luckily, many of the machines that make solar panels in China and the Polysilicon used in their production is exported from the US.
Tusks – They just laid me off, why would I cheerlead? I’m trying to get some facts out there to help people that keep jumping to the wrong conclusions and slandering hundreds of my friends and ex coworkers. What is very frustrating to me is the lack of information available to the press that’s resulting in uninformed speculative articles (or cartoons) like this one. You’ve probably been reading about this for a few days … I’ve been living it for months. Everything that I’ve read is so far from the truth, I’m having trouble believing it. The result is that entrenched interests will get their way and we all will suffer in the long term. You say you’d like to stop sending money to the Saudis … you’ll get your chance because China is next in line.
Unfortunately, your theory on economics doesn’t apply to efforts of this magnitude. Please refer to fact 8, and note that Solyndra received 15% of the funding relative to current industry leaders, and was given less than half the time. The funding was pulled for political and macroeconomic reasons, as well as fear … all of which were out of any one person’s control. I’m just saying don’t draw the wrong conclusions from that.
Energy is subsidized … always has been and always will. Do you think development of the first nuclear plant was profitable and “succeeded on it’s own merits”? (See Manhattan Project’s budget if you need help with the answer) Do you think the oil-fired power plants in the southeast aren’t subsidized by the war in Iraq? Do you make a donation for nuclear powered aircraft carriers, cruise missiles or UAV’s when you swipe your credit card at the pump? Does your electricity bill include a fee to cover Medicare costs of lung cancer patients that live near coal-fired power plants, or work in coal mines? A free market economy cannot address a stable energy supply … we figured that out a long time ago.
Your reference to efficiency is also out of place. The energy industry is about $ / kWh, not efficiency, which will not improve unless we invest in the companies manufacturing today’s technology. The only other way is for government to subsidize those that are trying something new (see Solyndra). If nobody buys today’s product, where does the R&D budget to improve it come from? Ford wouldn’t have a 500HP Mustang if lots of people hadn’t purchased Model T’s, Fairlanes and Escorts along the way. The solar industry currently employs over 100,000 people in the US. Existing solar panels work fine in the right application. Solyndra extended this with it’s unique technology.
Regardless, nobody intends for solar to supply “all of our current energy needs”. It’s peak power with no fuel costs, no pollution and way less maintenance. It is most certainly part of the immediate solution. See Germany, Japan, China, Italy, Spain, California, New Jersey etc. etc. Look at the production / demand curve of any utility and you’ll see that the peak power is close to double the base load and occurs at exactly the time when the sun is shining. As population grows and additional capacity is needed (assuming the economy ever recovers) or existing fossil fuel power plants expire, renewables will be added.
Finally, your analyst was way off in his estimates. More like $3 / watt, currently selling for $2.25 – $2.50 / watt with a factory that’s 50% ramped on the way to a cost of less than $1 / watt with the lowest balance of system in the industry. Given the right amount of time, yeah, it was a good business model. You won’t hear anyone saying that Solyndra was behind schedule …
Muzjik – Zombie is right. Solyndra lost money on every sale because the price of energy is determined, so solar projects and panels used to build them have to be priced accordingly to generate energy at a competitive rate … the price is the price. (That is unless consumers were willing to pay more for renewable energy … hah, did I say that out loud?) The fact that Solyndra was different (size, shape, usage etc.) also caused difficulties with price erosion, because the customers didn’t fully understand that the panel price included racking, large reductions in installation costs and balance of system costs.
The above was exacerbated by the fact that in the two years since the $535M DOE Loan Guarantee was issued, China invested ~100 times that amount in their pre existing solar manufacturing capacity. Mixed with an economic downturn that deflated the global solar market, sprinkle on an upcoming election that caused our government to fight itself over the investment in Solyndra, and voila … a recipe for disaster. I don’t expect anyone to have the foresight to predict all of those things, which is why I’m not upset at Solyndra management for what happened.
Once the factory was fully ramped, none of this would have been an issue. I can’t stress this enough … the factory wasn’t even fully built yet! This is why calling it a failure is so ridiculous … especially in the case of the Congressmen that were spamming political rhetoric before the bankruptcy was announced. They didn’t stop the money from being given, so why help prevent that investment from being realized? If the taxpayers end up getting screwed, these guys have some answering to do. Bring on the WSJ investigation.
Snork – See pictures of Solyndra’s factory in Fremont, CA on Google and consider that every machine, robot, computer etc. was custom built for this application. Nobody in the world has ever thought of layering thin films with evaporation and deposition processes on a cylinder before … it had never been done. Employees in Silicon Valley with the expertise to figure it out are not cheap. Passing all of the tests by UL, TUV, JET to get the panels certified, marketing, tradeshows … As you pointed out, add in the expense of permits, safety features, seismic protections, environmental protections, OSHA, etc. etc. (Solyndra had the fastest energy payback time of any panel on the market at 1.6 years) I’m scratching the surface here, but you get the point … not cheap. Also note again that exisiting flat silicon panel companies in China have benefitted from billions to get where they are today.
Why is employing thousands of Americans funny to you? You really think this is a joke? Have you looked at the recent unemployment numbers and the deficit we’re facing? I wish I could find the humor in this situation …
“Enjoy the short term political gain, it will be followed by long term pain.”
the american people paid for it. actually, they borrowed against their kids to pay for it. technically, it was my money, too.
“It sounds like you’ve given up on a manufacturing economy for the US”
forgive me if my first consideration of starting a manufacturing company in the US, is whether it can compete with the chinese. given your argument about how the american product was undercut by the chinese…
and this came to you as a surprise?
i’ll reiterate that ge produces their solar panels in china. ge ceo, immelt, sits on the president’s advisory board.
as for your 4000 workers…i keep getting the 1100 figure. perhaps another typo?
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this is all just stating the ‘obvious’.
‘nefarious’ is soon to follow. i’d even bet there is a nepotism angle, yet to be revealed.
considering your naivete about competing with the chinese in plastics manufacturing, your faith in the ‘honesty and quality’ of the solyndra management team is consistently bad.
You’ve accidentally highlighted what I consider one of the major flaws in the entire solar industry — its total lack of standardization.
Solar panels are constantly being improved. The photovoltaic cells made today are more efficient than the cells being made 10 years ago or even 3 years ago. And it stands to reason that the efficiency curve will continue upward — the cells made 5 years from now are very likely to be more efficient than the cells made today.
Because of this, many companies and people — including myself — put off installing current solar panels, because we (correctly) assume that soon enough, they will be obsolete, and we’ll be kicking ourselves for committing to an old technology when a better one was right around the corner.
This wouldn’t be such a big deal if the overall cost of the system was small, or if the installations were completely standardized industry-wide, so that new cells from a new company could be effortlessly and cheaply re-installed to replace the old cells in an array from an old company.
But you see — the solar industry currently fails in both challenges. Solar installations start at the tens-of-thousands-of-dollars range for just a single family home, and go way up for commercial buildings. So they’re not cheap to install in the first place. Not much anyone can do about that. But it’s in the second category where the solar industry as a whole shows its immaturity: Each company is proprietary, and installations from one company won’t necessarily take new cells made by a different company — or even new next-generation cells made by the original company itself. Because of this, the only way to get and start using any new generation of more-efficient solar panels is to completely tear down the old installation, and put in a brand new one. Which is nightmarishly expensive, and undoes the whole “solar panels will pay for themselves in X years” principle.
The customer base understands all this, though perhaps unconsciously. And it’s one of the main reasons why solar has not taken off to the extent it could have: The total absence of industry-wide standardization. If a customer could be completely assured that he could install a generic “solar rack” on his roof or wherever, in a one-time-only expense, and then forever have the ability effortlessly swap out old solar cells for next-generation cells, and then five years or ten years down the road swap out those formerly-cutting-edge-but now-obsolete cells with even more efficent new-new-new ones, etc., then he’d be more willing to make the jump.
Imagine this situation: It’s the early 20th century, and most houses are not yet wired for electricity or hooked up to the grid. Company XYZ makes electrical appliances, and says it will for a fee install wiring and outlets in your home to accommodate its appliances. You sign up, then they put in the wiring which is customized for their own electrical appliances, and you’re good to go. But then…Five years later, Company XYZ goes out of business, and Company ZYX comes out with greatly improved electical appliances that make your old ones look like antiques. So you go and buy some new appliances, only to discover — gasp! — the Company XYZ’s appliances required a five-prong outlet, while the ZYX appliances need three-prong outlets, and the current on the original wiring doesn’t match the demands of the new machines, and so forth, and the only way for you to upgrade is to tear out all the wiring in your home and start all over again with new proprietary wiring. And then five years down the road…it happens all over again.
If this had been the case, customers would have quickly learned that the proprietary nature of electrical installations was simply not worth the hassle, and electrification would have been very slowly adopted by the masses, until the industry got its act togther.
Well, luckily, that didn’t happen, because the fledgling electrical companies back then all agreed on an industry-wide standardization in size, design, current, etc., so that a single electrical installation would accommodate new appliances made by any manufacturer in the world, now and forever. Incredibly, the standardization has proved durable and remains in place today: You can buy a 2011 toaster or a futuristic computer and plug it right into an outlet installed in 1915, and it will work perfectly fine. Astounding!
But here’s the kicker: The modern solar panel industry is NOT standardized like this, so that the nightmare scenario has come true. If you go to the trouble and great expense of putting in a solar installation, you have no guarantee that it won’t become obsolete in five years, and when it does become obsolete, you’re almost certain to be stuck with it forever, because the new solar panels or cells probably won’t fit in the old racks, etc.
Just look at Solyndra itself as a perfect example of this. Solyndra’s technology, by your own admission, was somewhat superior to the technologies of three years ago, but Solyndra’s panels certainly couldn’t be effortlessly snapped into place in a homeowner’s old solar panel installation made in the 1980s or even 2008. Quite the contrary: It required a fresh now customized installation.
And now look into the future: Five or ten years from now, a new company may emerge — let’s just call it Ardnylos — and it comes out with a breakthrough new solar panel design that makes Solyndra’s panels look like steam-powered Model T’s. But the panels made by Ardnylos require yet again a completely different custom installation, costing big bucks up front. Pity those poor fools who invested in Solyndra’s 2011 panels, because now they’re stuck with them forever, as it would be too expensive and economically inefficient to replace them before reaching the fiscal payback point.
And so on and so on, as the years roll by.
Now, the average customer may not be overtly conscious of all this, but I think it’s vaguely in the back of everyone’s mind, and I posit that it is the primary reason why solar panels have not yet reached the tipping point of mass adoption. Solyndra’s eccentric and unique design only highlights the issue.
What needs to happen is that the ENTIRE solar industry WORLDWIDE needs to get together and agree on universal standards on size, connections, dimension, etc. etc., so that a standardized panel-less solar rack can be installed today, and customers can be totally assured that it will be compatible with all future new solar cells or panels. Snap into place, snap out, pop in a new one, etc. Even in 2075 AD, you should be able to snap in a next-next-next-next-next-generation hyper-efficient solar cell, in a rack installed back in 2011. Only when this is assured will there be customer confidence in the solar industry.
Homeowners can intuit what Zombie is saying – so they (meaning ME) decide to delay adopting this technology for the home/office and wait for it to be cheaper/better. (like waiting as late as possible to buy a new desktop home computer – in 6 months you can get it 50% cheaper and with a 100% faster processor – or maybe a desktop will be obsolete..).
So stop focusing on “selling” and focus on the financing. The business appears to have FAILED. Ex-Solyndran seems to be saying the failure is everyone else’s fault – the stupid customers and the competitors and the market itself. Other than it was paying your salary – this was a viable business, How ….exactly? And don’t use the quasi-religious -”it’s GREEN!” – tell me how it will be a good investment for me NOW and in 10 years. P.S. – do this while NOT sounding like a U.S. Auto executive from 1979 , i.e. buy american! (sure, it’s over-priced crap….but if you don’t I’ll be out of a over-paid job!!!)
Good on ya, Zombie. A valid and necessary point.
Zombie makes a critical point here about lack of standards. It’s one reason I haven’t bought panels. I would if it fell out how Zombie suggests. The standards that are flexible should be in place before the $535 million loan is made to the pie in the sky business people who never had a real business plan reviewed by real business people.
They should have been located in Texas or Mexico in rented facilities and offered stock options as part of employment. California is anti business towards this type of competitive business, although i hear the food, culture, and extracurricular activities are superior in all ways to Texas. And people vote correctly.
A good argument, Zombie, but while there is room for improvement, the current situation is not that bad. The industry has settled on just two connector designs, and making custom cables is not a big deal. Just buy the connectors and a crimping tool. The various rack mounts available are adjustable, for they are made by independent manufacturers who want to be adaptable to anybody’s panels.
Also, your existing panels will not be made obsolete by the introduction of newer, more efficient panels. Your panels will go on producing the same electricity as before. They are not obsolete in the sense of an old computer that won’t run today’s software. No point in replacing them before the end of their rated lifespan.
Waiting for better/cheaper is a tough call. I installed my system last year because my state (PA) opened a very brief window of opportunity by offering some very generous subsidies. I will set the ethics of subsidies aside for a moment. In my case, the combined state and federal subsidies paid for half the system.
So, I gambled that taking the subsidies now was better than waiting to see if solar electric systems dropped by half. So far, so good. The system was working so well that I expanded it from 4 to 5kw (without any subsidies), this time using mounts of my own design.(I have a small machine shop and saved about $1,000) Here I “lost” a little, for panel prices dropped sharply over the past year. On the other hand, 5 months out of the year, my electric bills are zero. My annual bill has dropped from about $1,400 to under $400. ($0.15/kwh last year, going to $0.16 this year and who knows what next year.)
As for subsidies, I think they are a bad idea. But if the govt. is going to take my tax money and put it in a pool to give to solar electric purchasers, I might as well get some of it back. Not only do subsidies distort the market and lead to Solyndra debacles, it is just plain unfair to take taxpayer money from many who will never have the means to install solar electric, and give it to someone like me, who had the upfront cash required to buy the system.
Excellent, truly excellent. Best was at the end, Solyndra backwards.
Oooooooooh, an idea that no one has ever done before! Why, that certainly guarantees that a business should — nay, shall — succeed and prosper!
Hate to break the news to you, Ex-Solyndrian, but the mere fact of having an idea that is a new wrinkle never tried before does NOT guarantee success, or even honorable failure. The Trail of Business Flops is littered with the corpses of companies whose breakthrough technologies were far far far more remarkable than Solyndra’s minor variant on a basic concept. Stanley Steamer automobiles, for example, were at the time of their introduction much more advanced in design than any other cars being made in that era — they had a unique foolproof propulsion system, better structure, superior safety features, etc. By all accounts, they were destined to dominate the emerging automobile industry, as they had technologies no one else had. Stanley Steamers were measurably five years ahead of internal combustion engine vehicles in performance. BUT… as we all know, within a few years they were totally obsolete and their very name a joke. How could this be possible, Ex-Stanleyian whines, when “nobody in the world had ever thought of” making a steam-powered car before! Why, it was so ahead of its time! Failure was impossible!
For a more recent example, look at the Segway Scooter. The technology behind it really is totally revolutionary and mind-boggling, unique in the world. When top tech CEOs saw a prototype in a private meeting with Dean Kamen, they came out raving that the “Ginger device” (as was its code name back then) would totally revolutionize human society: cities would be redesigned, all personal habits altered forever, cars and bicycles would disappear from the landscape, etc. etc. etc. The buzz was huge, the technology well and truly merited the term “breakthrough” (far more than Solyndra’s “breakthrough” of having solar cells on curved glass), and yet, we all know the end of this story as well — Segways pretty much flopped, and never did change society, and remain just a niche novelty item. Oooops. But how could that be possible, Ex-Segwayian whines, when “nobody in the world had ever thought of” making a gravity-defying stand-up scooter before!
I could repeat this same tale of woe a million times with a million similar examples, and you know it. There are many many other factors which dictate the success or failure of a business, and they have nothing to do with how neato a new product may or may not be. Even if Solyndra had managed to find a way to turn moonlight into electricity, or even make liquid solar-cell-paint that could simply be brushed onto any surface (or any number of even more amazing breakthroughs than “Look, curvy glass!”) — even then, there would be no guarantee of success. Bad market conditions, lack of demand, foreign competition, inept management — these can kill even the best of ideas.
The time has come to stop marveling at Solyndra’s wonderfulness, and pointing fingers of blame hither and yon. Solyndra had a decent product, but it was overpriced, and it faced withering competition from cheaper substitutes that themselves were good enough for most purposes. Our government investors couldn’t dissect the hype from the market realities, and gambled our taxpayer money on a very risky investment that predictably failed. Americans have every right to be angry, and to wonder just how many back-room shenanigans influenced this suspicious redistribution of funds.
Well said.
It’s time for us to declare separation of industry and state.
Regarding the statement “Nobody in the world has ever thought of layering thin films with evaporation and deposition processes on a cylinder before … it had never been done.”
Thermo-Stone, located in Marina, CA (on the Monterey Bay) has been depositing thin film heater elements on glass cylinders for at least the last 10-15 years.
http://www.thermostone.com/index.cfm/about_us.htm
Oh … one more thing. The DOE Loan Guarantee program that helped to fund Solyndra was put into place under the Bush Administration! Get your minds out of the political gutter and see this for what it really is … something bigger than tusks and burros. It’s convenient to tie this to politics because people hate Obama and Solyndra made the mistake of letting him stop in for a visit. Enjoy the short term political gain, it will be followed by long term pain.
The Boondoggle Failures Unexpectedly Rose™ is blooming very late in the season on my Blame Bush™ this year.
It must be the wet summer.
Hmm, I read that the Bush people had voted unanimously to NOT back this company as it was too much of a risk.
http://nation.foxnews.com/solyndra/2011/09/14/bush-admin-voted-against-solyndra-loan
You gotta update your talking points.
Crony Capitalism. Bleh.
“YOINK!”
Bullshit.
C’mon, don’t you remember the whaling industry’s dependence on the Whale Depletion Allowance from the federal government?
Why do we give multi billionaires $535 million to build a solar power panel making plant? If it is such an great investment, why do they need the American taxpayer to pay for it?
For the same reason that NFL owners get their stadiums built on the backs of taxpayers…:rolleyes:
The business failed becuase the Chinese stole the Flux Capacitor from Solyndra. Doubt it? Ask Marty McFly.
Besides – no one remembers the $500MM the government gave to H-P in 1939 when they started in that garage. That is how they….what? Uh, never mind.
“The energy industry is about $ / kWh, not efficiency, which will not improve unless we invest in the companies manufacturing today’s technology. The only other way is for government to subsidize those that are trying something new (see Solyndra).”
You lay down with dogs, you get fleas.
Accept taxpayer subsidies, you’re gonna get hammered when things go down the way they did at Solyndra. No point grumbling about it.
I refuse to accept your naked assertion that the “only other way” is for government to subsidize. Exactly *why* is that the *only* other way?
If your idea for a commercial product needs to be subsidized by taxpayers (money taken by force, in case you thought taxes were voluntary), then your idea sucks and it deserves its ultimate fate.
Ex-Solyndrian, your mystification with the tone of the remarks indicates that you assume the remarks spring whole straight from your late employer’s travails.
Not so by far. A good place to start is Love Canal –and what flowed from it. So many semi-bogus politically-favored ”green” companies –whose purpose is less to serve a market and more to transfer ‘conscience’ cash from we the people to thee the connected –that even good free-market ideas from honest profit-motived organizations are bound to get tarred to the extent Uncle Sam is directly involved in providing risk capital.
Unfortunate, entirely predictable, and historically-proven to be one of the fundamental ‘planned-economy’ clashes with human nature.
IOW, what i’m trying to say is, your average PJM reader/commenter’s sensibility on the over-arching topic begins somewhere around 1980 with a media-contrived crisis that created a new taxing authority-like thing called a ‘superfund’ –which provides cash to fund an entire industry engaged in the production of ‘lawfare’ and anti-USA-energy-production activism careers.
Carol Browner is a case in point, starting with her breakout work for Jimmy Carter’s administration (from whence emerged “Love Canal” in concert with Gore family and USSR Kremlin sponsor and associate Occidental Petroleum), continuing through work onboard several fronts of the international socialist movement organization, right on up through her power-czar desk in the Obama administration, from whence she developed predicates for the billions of dollars worth of USA-taxpayer ”green” financial liabilities contingent and directly-guaranteed –of which total Solyndra’s is but small part.
Of course, Mz. Browner’s quick post-2010-election skeedaddle from the Obama administration on the heels of the Tea Party’s winning some subpoena-empowered oversight committee chairs, has done nothing but raise still higher all (other than inside the Big Green wing of the Democratic party) fears and apprehensions concerning the government’s big push into the future of energy.
Great teamwork! Maybe you two can do something with this “Liar” optical illusion. http://www.wonderfulinfo.com/illusions/pg019.php Oh, so many politicians can be incorporated into that illusion!
A leftist friend of mine had said early on that Obamas administration was fairly honest and free of scandall. But after Acorn, Boeing, Gibson, Gunwalker, and now Solyndra, I wonder if he still thinks that.
Seriously, how many scandals does it take to turn the 9th Key?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Keys_to_the_White_House#The_13_Keys_to_The_White_House
ES @ 18 etc: thank you for illustrating the point so well.
Only thing missing in the cartoon … is the money being sent to foreign bank accounts for safe keeping until the dust settles down. That money is in Swiss, Cayman Island, and other foreign banks. The plan is to divvie it up later.
Aren’t the Solyndra guys now bundling more money for Obama 2012? If so you could add the first panel again with 2008 crossed out and 2012 written in… Great illustration… keep up the good work.
Nice work!
LINKED: Reaganite’s Sunday Funnies
http://www.businessinsider.com/anonymous-occupy-wall-street-2011-9?op=1
Someone’s photojournalism of the wall street occupation – mostly bored cops.
I am impressed w/ most posters, especially w/ Zombie. I am a slow typist, saved me lot of time. I’ve lived under, fought against & escaped socialism/communism of the Soviet kind; yep, it was the Evil Red Empire (100+ Mio dead civilians by the Comintern, including nine of my friends & a baby-bro).
I can add one more thing debunking Ex-Solyndrian’s (he’s an well instructed green lib) whining.
All tree-huggers, greenies, GW (in the 70′s it was G-cooling, now climate change)high priests (Algore made about 100+ Mio on this hoax!) claiming how evil & dirty & uncivilized crude is are ignoramuses & hypocrites in one crazy package.
They are oblivious/ignore the fact that crude is an incredibly powerful & beneficial hydrocarbon save hydrogen itself. For the record, I’ve been a proponent of hydrogen cars for 25 years. Most people think of refineries re: crude (fuels, diesel, lubricants) but omit so-called fractionating that brings 100s if not 1000s of products to the market & our civilization depends on. Just a few examples: myriads of plastics, polymers, fibers & even the cosmetics your wife/girlfriend just put on her pretty face… Coal is not just burned either. I rest my case. Oh, did I mention that I am a geologist?
The posters are great, the cartoon’s hateful, hateful partisan garbage and libel.
Which part of the cartoon is libelous? Every single implied accusation has been borne out by recent investigations:
- Solyndra’s backers DID make big contributions to the Obama campaign.
- Obama DID spend taxpayer money on guaranteed loans to Solyndra.
- The Obama administration DID pressure bureaucrats to push through the gift to Solyndra, despite everyone’s reservations.
- Solyndra DID pay lobbyists huge sums of cash, even after getting the loan, all the way to the moment of its bankruptcy
- The Solyndra factory WAS unionized, so union members got paid much of that loaned money.
- Solyndra DID declare bankruptcy after squandering a massive mountain of cash, and the American public IS crying about it.
Where’s the libel? And can a political cartoon even possibly be the basis for a lawsuit? Aren’t they supposed to be satirical and partisan?