In Memoriam: 2011 solar shakeout victims

As part of updating a research paper I’m writing on solar policy, I’ve been catching up on the state of the solar business. (Regular readers will note that since I joined KGI, I’ve been paying a lot more attention to biofuels).

To start, I thought I’d look at all the solar firms that died (or otherwise were mortally wounded) in 2011. I traced down the announcements of the firms mentioned in various stories, and here is what I found:

Company	HQ	Stock	Tech-nology	Date	Action	Current Status
Soliant	Monrovia, CA	private	CPV	Mar. 29	Liquidated	Liquidated for 1.5¢ on the dollar
Evergreen	Marlboro, MA	ESLR	ribbon Si	Aug. 15	Chapter 11	Liquidated
SpectraWatt	Hopewell Junction, NY	private	Si	Aug. 19	Chapter 11	In liquidation
Solyndra	Fremont, CA	private	thin film (CIGS)	Aug. 31	Chapter 11	Liquidated
Stirling Energy Systems	Scottsdale, AZ	private	thermal (Stirling engine)	Sep. 23	Chapter 7	In liquidation
Solon AG	Berlin, Germany	SOO1.F	Si	Dec. 13	Insolvency	Seeking a buyer
BP Solar	UK	(division of BP)	Si	Dec. 20	Announced plans to close	Winding down
Solar Millennium AG	Erlangen, Germany	S2M.F	CSP & PV solar farms	Dec. 21	Insolvency	Selling solar farm projects

Most of these were solar system manufacturers, making panels, tubes (Solyndra) or stand-alone thermal generating dishes (Stirling). The mainstream companies (like SpectraWatt) might have IP that’s useful for other PV companies, while the oddball companies (Evergreen, Solyndra, Stirling) had unique technologies of little or no value to other firms.

BP Solar’s decision to get out of PV marks the latest realization by oil companies that biofuels (not solar) fit their existing business model. I hope to blog on this another time.

Solar Millennium is unique in that it was a large solar farm developer, and thus its projects (if they still make economic sense) might be bought by other companies. One of its largest projects is the 1 gigawatt Blythe Solar Power Project that won a $2.1 billion loan guarantee from the DEO and was praised by DOE Secretary Steven Chu and California governor Jerry Brown. It appears that the Blythe and other US projects are being sold by Solar Millennium’s majority owned US subsidiary to SolarHybrid AG.