WFCN –
The San Jose, California-based solar power behemoth SunPower has announced its Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This follows a little over one month after the company laid off 350 workers in California.
SunPower executives have announced a reorganization and the sale of a portion of the company to Complete Solaria, based in Fremont.
Solar panels manufactured by SunPower have been powering millions of American homes for nearly 40 years.
“They were one of the early manufacturers of premium solar panels, they made some of the best solar panels in the business,” commented Dustin Mulvaney, an environmental studies professor at San Jose State University!
The news of the company’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing came on Monday, though.
“As solar panels got cheaper and cheaper, it just became harder and harder for premium solar panel manufacturers that were using a little bit older technology to compete with up and rising stars from China, really,” Mulvaney pointed out.
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The fact that production ceased a few years ago, according to Mulvaney, didn’t help matters.
However, he argues that the company was also negatively impacted by regulatory changes that reduced the incentives to deploy solar panels.
“We’ve undermined incentives, it’s not as economic for a ratepayer in PG&E territory to put solar panels in their roof, it just doesn’t pencil out all the time and that has hit the rooftop solar industry pretty hard,” said the executive.
“I believe the state has actually caused harm to an industry which it essentially helped start,” said Dan Kammen, an energy expert at UC Berkeley.
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Complete Solaria, a business based in Fremont, California, is slated to purchase a portion of SunPower’s surviving assets for $45 million, according to Monday’s bankruptcy notice.
The proposed sale presents a great chance for important aspects of SunPower to carry on under new ownership, which is especially important given the difficulties the company has had, according to SunPower’s executive chairman, Tom Werner.
According to an ex-employee of SunPower’s, the last San Jose facility off of Mabury Road closed its doors at the tail end of June. That is when 358 individuals were let go from five separate California locations, according to statistics from the state’s Economic Development Department.
“They bore a substantial amount of debt for an extended period,” Kammen remarked.
Even though Kammen’s roof is equipped with SunPower panels, he still anticipated this.
“We now know that they’ve been doing what we call fire sales, selling off some divisions at low cost to raise some capital which normally you have to do if you’re paying off employees,” said the executive.