How did a failing California solar company, buffeted by short sellers and shareholder lawsuits, receive a $1.2 billion federal loan guarantee for a photovoltaic electricity ranch projectâthree weeks after it announced it was building new manufacturing plant in Mexicali, Mexico, to build the panels for the project. The company, SunPower (SPWR-NASDAQ), now carries $820 million in debt, an amount $20 million greater than its market capitalization. If SunPower was a bank, the feds would shut it down. Instead, it received a lifeline twice the size of the money sent down the Solyndra drain. Two men with insight into the process are SunPower rooter Rep. George R. Miller III, (D.-Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee and the co-chairman of the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, and his SunPower lobbyist son, George Miller IV..... http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=46761
Apparently the Obama regime didn't bother to evaluate the basic business model for solar cell/panel manufacturing. If it cost 4-dollars to make and you can sell if for 2-dollars you might not have a viable business. I once designed solar power systems for space vehicles and ran into that problem personally. In order to buy high-efficiency cells (21%+ efficient) you have to subsidize their manufacture because there is no viable retail market for them. They simply cost more than they can be sold for on the open market. You have to get an exclusivity contract and pay about 2x market value to have them made and be consistently available. Hughes Space and Communications finally just bought a solar cell manufacturer after years of exclusive right to their products. Nobody mentions the big problem. Cell degradation. The people equipping their homes with solar and financing for 25-years are going to be shocked when those panels produce less than half of their beginning-of-life power after 15-years or so. Current cell technologies don't hold up under UV bombardment, proton bombardment and for terrestrial systems, dirt.