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| Where Our $500 Million Went: Solyndra Glass Tubes Used as Modern Art |
| 2012-08-21 |
| Long article with pictures and a video -- worth the read The missing Solyndra tubes have finally turned up -- in a modern art exhibit at U.C. Berkeley. One of the great mysteries of the 2011 Solyndra bankruptcy was: What happened to all that money? After the United States government "loaned" Solyndra $535 million, the money quickly vanished; the bankruptcy court later found that the company had essentially no cash on hand. They had spent it all on equipment and inventory. Surely, then, the inventory could be sold and liquidated, to recover some of the ill-spent cash -- right? Well, not really. Auctions of the material at the shuttered Solyndra factory produced very little revenue, as the highly specialized machinery and proprietary photovoltaic components spurred little interest among the auction vultures, since the parts could be used only for one specific purpose: to make Solyndra's unique tubular solar panels. The fate of Solyndra's millions of unused glass tubes is still unknown (many of them were likely destroyed -- we'll get to that part of the story in a moment), but luckily a pair of Bay Area artists somehow managed to get their hands on some of the surviving Solyndra tubes and put them to good use...not to produce electricity, but as art. -------------- WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL THE OTHER TUBES? Here's where the story takes a tragic turn. If SOL Grotto has only 1,368 of the estimated 24 million high-tech unused Solyndra tubes, what happened to the rest of them? The answer is not entirely clear at this stage, but we do have some clues. |
| Posted by:Sherry |
| #4 The design of many solar "flat panels" dissipates or scatters the very energies its supposed to collect or concentrate - thats why a lot of them must be set up over a large area or space, but even then the energy return is weak. Solyndra's tubular solar panels "rejects" the energy. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2012-08-21 23:45 |
| #3 I've had Personal experience wuth start-ups. They typicly (After gaining a LOT of cash) Bankrupt and Keep/spend it all, then Organize as a NEW company,(And shed all the Debt) and procede on their merry way. I HIGHLY recommend that Investors wait, past the first Bankruptcy, THEN invest. (Maybe past the second, third and sometimes the Fourth) |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2012-08-21 13:13 |
| #2 Typical government hand out. All goes to waste. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2012-08-21 11:58 |
| #1 Could have made a modernist Organ* out of it. *Church style. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2012-08-21 11:23 |