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1-year-old Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. a pioneer in materials science and renewable energy technologies, today voluntarily filed a petition for relief under Chapter 11 in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. As part of its bankruptcy plan, ECD intends to sell through separate sales its wholly owned operating subsidiary United Solar Ovonic LLC (USO) and other assets, including its minority stake in Ovonyx, Inc. On 13 February ECD sold its majority owned subsidiary, Ovonic Battery Company, Inc. (OBC), to BASF Corporation for the gross purchase price of $58 million in cash before transaction fees, minority participations,...

Attorneys for the company filed papers in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware last week asking for a court order to dispose of up to 3,900 pallets filled with glass tubes that were used to make Solyndra’s solar panels. The lawyers said the company tried to auction the tubes, return them to a supplier and sell the material to recycling companies. But it was too expensive to ship back to the supplier and nobody seemed interested in buying the glass, the attorneys said in court papers. Unable to sell the assets, Solyndra said it would be cheaper just to abandon the...

The Auburn Hills, Mich., company filed for Chapter 11 protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Detroit after it was unable to come to terms on an out-of-court deal with its convertible bondholders, according to Michael E. Schostak, director of business development at Energy Conversion Devices.

BLYTHE, Calif.—A major Southern California solar energy project could be delayed or even canceled following a deadly outbreak of distemper among kit foxes and the discovery of a prehistoric human settlement on the work site, according to a report Saturday. The $1 billion Genesis Solar Energy Project near Blythe in the desert east of Los Angeles was on track to start producing power for some 187,500 homes starting in 2014. But critics tell the Los Angeles Times ( http://lat.ms/wrtgOD) the distemper outbreak and discovery of a possible Native American cremation site show that expedited procedures approved by state and federal...

Environmentalists are torn over the high cost of breaking reliance on fossil fuels. Industrial-scale solar development is well underway in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. The federal government has furnished more public property to this cause than it has for oil and gas exploration over the last decade — 21 million acres. In the fight against climate change, the Mojave Desert is about to take one for the team. "I have spent my entire career thinking of myself as an advocate on behalf of public lands and acting for their protection," said Johanna Wald, a veteran environmental...

Snips from excerpt website: Japanese solar company Sanyo plans to lay off about 140 employees in California, or about 40 percent of its manufacturing workforce in the United States, as it shifts its strategy in order to compete with large rivals, particularly those from China. The company, which is part of Panasonic, is buiding a large factory in Malaysia that will make wafers and turn them into solar cells and then panels. Panasonic plans to invest 45 billion yen (about $580 million) in the new factory. A fellow manufacturer in Japan, Sumco, announced Friday it would get out of the...

It seems much of the world is wising up to the Global Warming Alarmism that has driven so much foolish and costly taxation and regulation, subsidies and profiteering. Well, much but not all of the world. Here’s a quick overview, courtesy of the British Global Warming Policy Foundation: . . .

The U.S. Department of Commerce hinted on Monday that American solar panel manufacturers might prevail in their case against subsidized Chinese imports. Led by SolarWorld of Hillsboro, a group of U.S. solar panel manufacturers have asked the federal government to add a 50 to 250 percent tariff to imported solar panels from China to make up for 30 Chinese government subsidy programs that artificially reduce the panel prices Chinese manufacturers can offer. Chinese-made solar panels already represent half the American market, according to this story in the New York Times.

Blogging from my phoneCheck WUWT Solar Reference PageUpdated: It was an X1.7 class eruption,  it does not appear to be headed towards Earth. JTF

An immense blast of plasma spewed late Sunday night from the sun led to the strongest radiation storm bombarding our planet since 2005, and a rare warning from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency -- and even a plan to redirect certain high-flying airplanes. NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center -- the nation’s official source of warnings about space weather and its impact on Earth -- issued a watch for a geomagnetic storm expected to hit our planet Tuesday morning after a satellite witnessed an ultraviolet flash from the massive solar eruption, according to Spaceweather.com.

A powerful solar eruption is expected to blast a stream of charged particles toward Earth tomorrow (Jan. 24), as the strongest radiation storm since 2005 rages on the sun. Early this morning (0359 GMT Jan. 23, which corresponds to late Sunday, Jan. 22 at 10:59 p.m. EST), NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory caught an extreme ultraviolet flash from a huge eruption on the sun , according to the skywatching website Spaceweather.com. The solar flare spewed from sunspot 1402, a region of the sun that has become increasingly active lately. Several NASA satellites, including the Solar Dynamics Observatory, the Solar Heliospheric Observatory...

Boulder, Colo. Statement by Susan Greene, president of the American Solar Energy Society: The American Solar Energy Society (ASES) applauds the decision by President Obama to deny a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline at this time. It’s simply good energy and climate policy to discourage further dependence on fossil fuels, regardless of the friendliness and stability of the source.

Willard & Kelsey Solar Group LLC laid off about 40 people indefinitely at the beginning of January until changes to its production line are completed, a company official said Monday. Michael Cicak, the company's chief executive officer and chairman of the board, would not say when the changes would be completed or when the laid-off employees could return to work. "We have some technical people in here improving the efficiency of the assembly line," Mr. Cicak said, adding that the Perrysburg-based facility still has about 30 employees. He said Willard & Kelsey has a little more than 80 employees when...

It’s not every day that the New York Times makes a compelling case against government giveaways. But a recent page-one article underscored that the Solyndra scandal was only the tip of the solar-subsidy iceberg. Huge companies like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, General Electric, utilities including Exelon and NRG, and even Google are receiving government guarantees that ensure large profits with virtually no risk — except to the taxpayer. The Times ascribes to the Obama administration a “gold-rush mentality” when Congress expanded green-power incentives in 2009, despite a paralyzing federal deficit. The chief executive of NRG, which received $5.2 billion in...

Now seems an unlikely time for handing out bonuses at bankrupt Solyndra LLC, but that’s the plan of company attorneys intending to dole out up to a half-million dollars to persuade key employees to stay put. Nearly two dozen Solyndra employees could receive bonuses ranging from $10,000 to $50,000 each under a proposal filed by Solyndra’s attorneys in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. The attorneys say the extra money will add motivation at a time when workers at the solar company have little job security and more responsibilities because so many of their colleagues have been fired. The names of...

Solar failuresThe Orange County Register December 29, 2011 10:03 AM Sooner or later, the laws of economics prevail, even in heavily subsidized industries like solar power. The latest evidence that government manipulation cannot overcome economic reality is the decision by BP PLC, the giant British energy company, to leave the solar power business. BP has developed solar energy for 40 years and for more than a decade touted its “Beyond Petroleum” campaign. The Wall Street Journal suggested, however, that BP’s solar experiment was more gimmick than serious investment. BP spent millions trying to go green, but simultaneously spent billions on...

AN Australian university has created the narrowest conducting wire made, which could transform the computer industry, according to a report published in Science magazine today. The Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology at the University of NSW in Sydney has created a wire 10,000 times smaller than a human hair, measuring four atoms wide and one atom tall. But despite the astonishingly tiny diameter, the electrical resistivity of the technology is identical to that of a traditional copper wire, proving Ohm's law that electrical current flow does not depend on wire width. By placing chains of singular...

Solar Company Scraps Factory, Leaves Mich. in DarkGrant applications don't match up with solar company's other information. By Scott McGrew | Monday, Jan 2, 2012 | Updated 2:59 PM PST A San Jose-based company has pulled out of plans to build a multimillion-dollar solar cell factory in Saginaw, Mich. GlobalWatt CEO Sanjeev Chitre blamed the shutdown on the poor economy and competition from overseas; however, many critics are wondering if there really was much of a factory to shut down. Far from a mega-factory promised in early paperwork, GlobalWatt's Saginaw operations actually employed slightly more than a dozen workers. GlobalWatt...

Idaho Power Co. told a southeastern Idaho polysilicon manufacturer that the utility could turn off its power by Tuesday if it doesn’t pay an electricity bill from November. Honolulu-based Hoku Corp., which has survived so far with help from Chinese financiers, lodged a formal protest with Idaho Public Utilities Commission regulators after getting a termination of service notice on Dec. 22. When Hoku missed the Dec. 21 payment, Idaho Power sent a notice that power would be shut off on Jan. 3 — unless Hoku came up with the money. “The fact of the matter is, Hoku has missed a...

WILLMAR — The Willmar Municipal Utilities Commission on Tuesday rejected a motion to study the feasibility of a solar project for Willmar Municipal Utilities at this time. The commission defeated a motion to sign a nonbinding letter of intent with tenKsolar of Minneapolis to study the feasibility of a 600-kilowatt-hour project as a showcase to prospective national and worldwide customers. The study had been proposed by tenKsolar executives Joel Cannon, chief executive officer, and Jim Losleben, business development vice president.

INSIGHT - More solar firms set to burn up as prices sinkReuters - UK Focus – 10 hours ago Dec 23 (Reuters) - Only four years ago, hundreds of start-ups optimistically built factories and churned out solar panels to meet rising demand. Now, closures and failure loom for many. The brutal shakeout is a dramatic reversal for an industry that has seen overall global growth of more than 30 percent annually over the past decade and this year will reach new records for solar panel sales. Only a handful of manufacturers are now profitable in the face of too much...

As Gov. Jerry Brown participated in a Capitol menorah-lighting ceremony this week to mark the onset of the Jewish holiday Hanukkah, he uttered a secular prayer for a miracle that would make California a model of carbon-free energy.Today's miracle, he said, "is not to find more oil, but to utilize the sun," adding, "when we continue to use our intelligence, we're going to take that sun through the miracle of modern science and technology, and we're going to light up California, our cars, our homes, our air conditioners."It was one of several recent events at which Brown disparaged global-warming agnostics...

Oil giant BP is preparing to exit the solar industry entirely. BP is preparing to wind down its BP Solar unit and sell-off the stakes it has in various projects around the world. A document announcing the decision to the 100 employees who will be affected says changes in the solar industry have left BP unable to achieve sufficient margins in the sector. It says the decision is made with regret after a “near 40-year commitment to solar energy”. A BP spokesman confirms the move and says that over the last six months "regrettably we have come to the decision...

Gov. Jerry Brown sees a modern day message for proponents of solar power in the story of Hanukkah. Speaking at the Capitol Menorah Lighting this morning, the Democratic governor cast the eight-day Jewish holiday, which begins tomorrow, as a good time to reflect on "the whole idea that we're running out of oil so we need a miracle."

I'm talking about the old multiplication and long division calculation methods. I know what you are probably thinking. That I am some public school advocate, even though I was pissed as hell when my kindergarten daughter asked me if I knew the happy kwanzaa song. But are these really useful anymore? I mean you can buy a calculator for $1 that does all these things and the software developers didn't use those methods for creation of the devices. Did you even understand why these algorithms worked at the time you were taught them? Not trying to be controversial; just want...

Green activists, take note – for Australia fully to embrace solar power, Canberra would have to spend $100 billion, with photovoltaic cells to generate the electricity covering an area twice the size of Sydney in order to replace Australia’s indigenous inexpensive coal-fired power plants with renewable energy sources. This is not an insignificant figure, as Australian coal currently generates 80 percent of Australia's electrical energy output. The grim statistic was contained in the recent report, “Keeping the Home Fires Burning,” issued by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. So, who is the Australian Strategic Policy Institute? Tree-hugging, wallaby and kangaroo friendly...

Abound Solar, given a $400 million Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantee for a project expected to create 400 permanent jobs, receives private financial backing through an investment firm founded by a fundraising bundler for President Obama. The Sunlight Foundation notes that Bohemian Companies, which was founded by billionaire and Obama bundler Pat Stryker, participated with other companies in the "second institutional equity round of financing" in 2008 for Abound Solar, which recieved $104 million total through that round of financing. Stryker gave $50,000 to Obama's inauguration, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, and raised a further $87,000 for...

Psychoanalysis is usually the wrong way to understand politics, but the Obama Administration may be reviving the field with its Freudian slips. The latest to land on the couch is Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson, who gave an unintentionally candid interview this weekend with Thalia Assuras of Energy Now News.

There is a growing movement to end all federal subsidies for energy as the country’s national debt nears $15 trillion. One report released by a coalition of free-market analysts estimated there was $380 billion in government subsidies for energy in 2011. The Green Scissors 2011 report estimated that $53 billion was lost in oil and gas revenues from royalty-free leases in federal waters and another $6 billion a year in ethanol tax credits. Americans for Prosperity came to Michigan this Saturday as part of its Energy for America Tour. The tour continues Monday with stops in Portage at noon and...

President John F. Kennedy’s nephew, Robert Kennedy, Jr., netted a $1.4 billion bailout for his company, BrightSource, through a loan guarantee issued by a former employee-turned Department of Energy official. It’s just one more in a string of eye-opening revelations by investigative journalist and Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer in his explosive new book, Throw Them All Out. The details of how BrightSource managed to land its ten-figure taxpayer bailout have yet to emerge fully. However, one clue might be found in the person of Sanjay Wagle. Wagle was one of the principals in Kennedy’s firm who raised money for Barack...

President John F. Kennedy’s nephew, Robert Kennedy, Jr., netted a $1.4 billion bailout for his company, BrightSource, through a loan guarantee issued by a former employee-turned Department of Energy official. It’s just one more in a string of eye-opening revelations by investigative journalist and Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer in his explosive new book, Throw Them All Out. The details of how BrightSource managed to land its ten-figure taxpayer bailout have yet to emerge fully. However, one clue might be found in the person of Sanjay Wagle. Wagle was one of the principals in Kennedy’s firm who raised money for Barack...

A solar power station in space measuring several kilometres in length may sound like something from a science fiction film, but the reality is that this idea could well be operational and supplying much of the worlds energy requirements within less than 20 years. Space based solar power stations are not a new idea, in fact they have been researched since the 1970’s. Back in 2009 the Californian state regulators granted approval to the Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and Solaren Corp. to start creating a solar based power plant in space. Solaren, founded by veterans of Hughes Aircraft, Boeing...

A new book by Hoover Institution fellow Peter Schweizer details the startling extent of the cronyism that has pervaded President Obama’s “green jobs” push. According to Schweizer, 4 out of every 5 renewable energy companies backed by the Energy Department was “run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers.” Those companies’ “political largesse is probably the best investment they ever made in alternative energy,” Schweizer explains. “It brought them returns many times over.” Doug Ross spotted the relevant excerpt of Schweizer’s book (h/t Ben Domenech’s Transom): When President-elect Obama came to Washington in late 2008, he was outspoken about...

United Solar Ovonic (UNI-SOLAR) is once again cutting jobs at its Greenville facility. This will be the third time since December 2009. The latest layoffs are part of a furlough, Michael Schostak, director of business development and communications for UNI-SOLAR'S parent company, Energy Conversion Devices Inc. (ECD), told 24 Hour News 8. He said 140 employees will be let go at the Greenville facility, and plants nationwide will be idled until at least the end of the year.

Adding to the controversial financial failure of alternative energy loans, Beacon Power follows Solyndra in bankruptcy Following the collapse of solar panel maker Solyndra LLC two months ago, another energy company, Beacon Power Corp., goes bankrupt after receiving a $43 million US loan guarantee. The Massachusetts-based energy company had originally used the loan to support a plant outside Albany, N.Y., storing power to help electric companies manage movements in supply and demand. Unable to raise more funds after the political backlash over Solyndra's $500 million plus bankruptcy filing, the company filed Sunday. Beacon Power creates flywheels to store power and...

The sun shines on the beachfront mansions of Malibu and La Jolla, just as it does on Compton and Barrio Logan in San Diego. ... But based on how California policymakers dole out valuable subsidies for solar panels placed on the residential roofs, the poorest parts of our sunny state might as well be on the dark side of the moon. California is in the midst of by far the nation's most ambitious program to convert to solar energy, one that began in 2006 when then Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared that during the next decade, the state would place solar...

Charlotte Observer is reporting that Apple has begun work building a 174 acre solar farm to power their new Maiden, North Carolina data center. The data center, located in Catawba County, was revealed by Steve Jobs during the iOS 5 keynote at WWDC this year, and will be partly responsible for powering iCloud. It was revealed earlier this year that Apple was purchasing land around the data center. Now we know why. Permits issued by Catawba County show that the Cupertino, Calif., company has been approved to reshape the slope of some of the 171 acres of vacant land it...

The Obama administration on Thursday announced its plan for solar energy development, directing large-scale industrial projects to 285,000 acres of desert in the Western U.S. while opening 20 million acres of the Mojave for development. The Bureau of Land Management's "solar energy zones" are intended to make some of the desert's most sensitive landscapes less desirable for solar prospecting by identifying "sweet spots" that have already passed environmental requirements and therefore promise expedited permitting, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said. "These 445 square miles of zones are ... where development will be driven," Salazar said. The 17 solar energy zones...

Nations most at risk from global warming Save this story to read later AAP October 26, 2011 10:17AM A THIRD of humanity, mostly in Africa and South Asia, face the biggest risks from climate change and rich nations in northern Europe will be least exposed, according to a new report. Bangladesh, India and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are among 30 countries with "extreme'' exposure to climate shift, according to a ranking of 193 nations by Maplecroft, a British firm specialising in risk analysis. Five Southeast Asian nations - Indonesia, Burma, Vietnam, the Philippines and Cambodia - are also...

Global warming is 'real' and temperatures have climbed steadily over the past decades, a long-awaited, independent study has found, refuting skeptics’ claims that there isn’t enough evidence to assert that the world climate is changing. According to a study published yesterday (20 October) by the Berkley Earth Project, which included U.S. physicists, climatologists and statisticians, the average world land temperatures climbed approximately 1 degree Celsius since the mid-1950s. The Berkley project, funded among others by the Koch Foundation, linked to the company which Greenpeace called a ‘kingpin of climate science denial,’ has analysed data from 15 different sources, in some...

SUMATRA, Indonesia –Several earthquakes have struck near south Sumatra of the 5.0 and 5.1 magnitude range today- making a tense situation on the volcanically-dotted archipelago potentially even more volatile. The Anak Krakatau volcano is showing signs of increased seismic activity. Authorities fear the volcano is building towards an eruption that could dwarf the one which occurred in 2007. Indonesia’s Volcanology and Geological Disasters Mitigation Center reported the numbers of seismic tremors now registering from the volcano have exceeded 5,000 a day. There are also reports of a gaseous mist which has seeped from the volcano and have enshrouded it in...

- China on Friday issued a harsh rebuke of an anti-dumping complaint filed by U.S. solar firms, warning the United States not to take protectionist measures that could harm the global economy. Seven U.S. solar manufacturers on Wednesday asked the Obama administration to impose duties of more than 100 percent on China solar imports, which they said were unfairly undercutting U.S. prices and destroying American jobs. The controversy comes at a sensitive time in U.S.-China trade relations, which are plagued by U.S. concerns over market access in China, Beijing's treatment of intellectual property rights, and raging debate over the value...

In 2009, then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm touted the $725 million Wixom renewable energy park project as “symbolic for Michigan in what we’re going to become.” The new solar power companies were supposed to create 4,000 jobs in a closed auto assembly plant and provide a vivid example of Michigan’s economic transition from automobiles to green energy. In return the state approved a $100 million tax credit. Two years later, Ford told the Wixom city officials the deal wasn’t happening. Michigan Capitol Confidential took a look back at the nine solar power companies that were approved for state tax credits. Many have...

Americans need to know why the Energy Department approved a loan guarantee for Solyndra when the company was so clearly troubled. But politicizing this mess to smear the entire renewable energy industry won't help the country or the jobless. This industry is estimated to have doubled its number of American jobs in the past two years. Demonizing it could cripple its job-creating potential. San Jose's SunPower is the latest victim. Fox News has made a series of outrageous claims about it, calling its $1.2 billion federal loan guarantee a scandal "bigger than Solyndra." This is utterly baseless. Fox, without a...

SPRING VALLEY, WI - Ask Paula Lugar of Spring Valley why she and her husband Frank had Chris Jarosch of Carr Creek Electric Service in Woodville install solar panels in their yard, and her answer is simple, "It's the right thing to do." The Lugars, members of the Spring Valley Earth Council and longtime readers of Mother Earth News have always been environmentally conscious. "We've been watching the technology for years; we've always wanted to reduce our impact on this earth," said Paula. Two years ago the couple installed a geo-thermal system and now, with the use of solar panels,...

As Republican lawmakers pound the Obama administration for pouring a half-billion dollars into now-bankrupt solar panel maker Solyndra, a much bigger federal government bet on green energy looks to be quietly paying off for California. Six large solar power plants to help the state meet its ambitious clean electricity goals are proceeding on schedule, according to their developers. Like Solyndra, these projects carry federal loan guarantees — $7 billion worth in total — .. considered key to attracting private investment in alternative energy. The plants are expected to create nearly 4,000 construction jobs over the next five years and an...

Pittsburgh--(ENEWSPF)--October 14, 2011. Today, Texas Governor and Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry unveiled his energy plan for America. The plan, if implemented, will poison our air and water with toxic pollutants like soot, smog, arsenic, cadmium, dioxin, lead, and formaldehyde. It would also undercut safeguards from mercury, which is a neurotoxin and is known to harm developing fetuses. “Rick Perry’s energy plan reads like a roadmap for making America’s kids sick,” said Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune. “Under this plan, we can expect to see much higher rates of asthma among children, and risk to pregnant women from mercury...

General Electric picks Colorado to build biggest US solar factoryBy Associated Press, Published: October 13 NEW YORK — General Electric Co. will build the largest solar factory in the U.S. near Denver. The company, which had announced in April it would build the factory, said Thursday it had selected Aurora, Colo., a suburb east of Denver, as the location. **SNIP** The falling prices have led to the bankruptcies of three solar panel makers in the last two months, including Solyndra, a panel maker that collapsed despite receiving a $535 million loan guarantee from the federal government. Vic Abate, who runs...

With the Solyndra scandal still swirling, the Obama administration is under pressure to reveal the financial condition of the solar companies that received $4.75 billion in similar federal loan guarantees on the last day of the program. Republican lawmakers on two House committees are seeking details about the loans given to First Solar, SunPower Corp. and ProLogis. Of those three companies, troubling financial revelations have emerged about SunPower, which received a $1.2 billion loan, more than twice the money approved for Solyndra, which filed for bankruptcy last month after receiving a $528 million loan. The Energy Department says on its...

Low demand continues to hit the global solar market. As price drops continue, some solar firms have been reportedly trying to sell their in-house equipment. However, demand for the equipment is low. Oversupply continues to cast a cloud over the solar market. Many firms have been forced to sell solar products and materials with low prices to maintain cash flows. As the fourth quarter is the traditional low season and lowly-priced solar products have failed to stimulate demand, most firms have been unable to operate at full capacity, leaving little room for used equipment in the market. During previous boom...