More Solar Companies File for Bankruptcy
04/05/2012
SustainableBusiness.com News
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:
Website: www.solarindustrymag.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.10037