Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
Intel-backed SpectraWatt to close New York solar factory
As competition with low-cost Chinese photovoltaic module makers intensifies, SpectraWatt, a solar startup spun out of Intel, has notified New York officials that it will shut down its factory in March and lay off 117 workers, according to a filing with the state’s Department of Labor.
The closure of the East Fishkill, N.Y., plant comes seven months after it opened and less than three years after SpectraWatt launched with a $50 million investment lead by Intel Capital, the chip giant’s investing arm. Other investors included Goldman Sachs, PCG Clean Energy and Technology Fund and German solar company Solon. Most of those investors also backed a $41.4 million round of funding for SpectraWatt announced in March.
SpectraWatt did not respond to a request for comment about the company’s plans or the shuttering of the solar cell factory, which was first reported by the Times Herald Record of Middletown, N.Y.
But in its filing with the New York labor department, SpectraWatt listed the reason for the factory’s closure as “economic.”
When SpectraWatt started in June 2008, its chief executive, Andrew Wilson, told me that the startup would be able to break into an increasingly crowded market through technological innovation.
“The solar industry today looks like the microelectronics industry in the late ‘70s – there’s very few standards and no one is manufacturing at scale,” Wilson, an Intel veteran, said at the time. “It’s all about manufacturing processes and material sciences that will lead to fundamental breakthroughs. The product is vastly simpler than a microprocessor but the fundamental nature of a solar cell isn’t all that different. When you think of what it takes to manufacture globally and manage supply chains, that’s Intel’s core competence.”
Yet within a year, Chinese photovoltaic cell makers would ramp up production on a scale that dwarfed SpectraWatt’s 60-megawatt capacity, upending the global solar business by cutting prices and capturing a 40 percent share of the California market.
from MediaFile:
CES: “Green” envy on Day 2
Several exhibitors took up the “green” theme at CES 2009 as the “Pre” party continued. Any chance Dell had to upstage Palm disappeared in a cloud of secrecy with the “Adamo” laptop it briefly presented, but gave no details about.
Fuji said its EnviroMAX alkaline batteries were made of more than 90 percent recycled materials, had no mercury, cadmium and were PVC free.
Singapore-based Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies said their “HydroPack” water-activated and portable power system HydroPak could provide 4 to 5 hours of 50 watt emergency power without pollution or noise.
Design conscious Areaware showed off a retro and playful radio called “Magno”, that it said was made in Indonesia with sustainable harvest timber.
And Greenpeace held a press conference praising gadgets by Lenovo, Sharp, Samsung, Nokia and Toshiba in its 2008 Green Electronics Survey.
Intel rolled out the next generation of its netbooks aimed at the education sector and emerging markets. The third generation Classmate PC netbook is actually a netbook tablet, adding a touch screen and powered by Intel's Atom processor.
The funny thing is the lesson being drawn from this. Folks are saying we should level the playing field with PRC’s terrible centralized planning investment decisions by making equal/greater terrible centralized planning investment decisions. If the Chinese want to invest in a non-commercially viable business, I would say we’d be better off taking advantage of their subsidizing the business and devote our resources elsewhere. Devoting our resources elsewhere is better done by the private sector, which rotates capital far more quickly than the government. Less government will equal greater jobs.