Posted on 05/12/2017 5:36:54 PM PDT by lowbridge
The company once hailed as Europe’s largest solar panel producer filed for bankruptcy Wednesday, blaming cheap Chinese panels for flooding the market.
“The ongoing price erosion and the development of the business” has left the company “over-indebted and thus obliged to file for insolvency proceedings,” SolarWorld, which is also the largest U.S. solar panel maker, said in a statement.
The filing comes after SolarWorld was forced to lay off employees earlier this year. The company employs around 3,000 people, including 800 in Hillsboro, Oregon, and was one of the few German-based solar companies to survive a recent market downturn.
SolarWorld is only the latest bankrupt solar company to blame the Chinese. U.S.-based Suniva Inc. filed for bankruptcy in April, also citing stiff competition from Chinese solar panel makers.
-snip
Cuts to subsidies in Europe only made things worse for the solar industry, furthering ensuring cheap Chinese panels would win out. A similar story played out in the U.S. where lucrative federal and state subsidies spurred green energy.
SolarWorld has gotten a whopping $115 million in federal and state grants and tax subsidies since 2012, according to the Union-backed group Good Jobs First. And that’s on top of the nearly $91 million in federal loan guarantees the company got during that time.
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Our 4.5KW panels are from Canadian Solar with individual Enphase grid-tie inverters. Just getting to the ten year point and still going strong.
No one’s against you getting your power from the thermonuclear generator 8 light minutes away.
We just don’t want to subsidize it.
“Our 4.5KW panels...”
Roughly the size of my roof - that is one SERIOUS panel.
If they can’t compete with the Chinese, even with taxpayer subsidies, something is wrong with their business model.
Our photo-voltaic solar panels are not on our roof. They are mounted on the ground. Makes a great lean-to for the yard equipment. The swimming pool water heater panels are on the roof, along with the 150 gallon solar hot water heater.
Still REALLY BIG!
So Chinese manufactured panels are so cheap they put SUBSIDIZED US panel makers out of biz?
What a scam.
Well said.
Mr. Obama, would you like to comment on the 256 million dollars you gave to Solar World?
Trump is going to stop all the wind/solar subsidies. This will be huge. Not sure how the Chinese affect things.
The subsidies I am sure came with large donations to dems and dem front groups.
Notice, if you will, that the majority of the companies building solar farms and Industrial Wind Turbine Farms are NOT American companies.
The majority of them are German, since Merkel has destroyed practical power generation there, those companies are shoring up their bottom line with OUR money.
The Windfarm builders raping our Hoosier countryside are Juwi and E-on.
We beat them back in my county once, now a neighboring county is seriously flirting with the idea. Sure hope the subsidies end before they cut the deal.
shoot
the power company must hate you, have any of your neighbors followed your lead ?
Lots of them! We were the first in Cochise County to get the Performance Based Incentive plan. Who could pass up a 15% return on investment?
Can anyone tell me the difference between chinese solar companies dumping cheap solar cells on the market to gain market share and chinese steel companies dumping cheap steel on markets to gain market share.
one more reason to pull out of the Paris Agreement and end the manmade global warming scam once and for all.
just do it, Pres Trump.
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