Abound Solar - Colorado Company Goes Belly-Up

Abound Solar, a Colorado manufacturer of thin-film solar cells went under this week. Pressure from inexpensive Chinese products combined with poor management drove a promising company out of business in just two years.

The company spun-off research done at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO. Before re-branding itself as "Abound Solar" the company was called AVA Solar. AVA or air-vacuum-air, representing the unique assembly method used. 

The thin-film cadmium-tellurium photovoltaic cells produced by the company were the brainchild of Dr. W.S. Sampath. I wrote optimistically about Dr. Sampath and the company when they first announced their business plan. See this post for a more extensive background of the company.

I had hoped Abound...

California Raises the Bar on Renewable Energy

The State of California passed a law today requiring one third of the power supplied to the state come from renewable energy by the year 2020. All it needs is Gov. Jerry Brown's signature to be law.  I can't see him NOT signing it.

This might mark the beginning of what I have been predicting since Obama took office. A convergence of democrats and republicans on an energy bill in late 2011. Of course that lame energy bill brought to you by the three amigos - Kerry, Graham , and Lieberman didn't get passed last year.  It was too oily, and glowing red.  We now have the BP oil disaster and Fukushima fresh in the collective neo-cortex and are poised for RADICAL change in energy policy.  If we can pass a national energy bill that comes close to this Californina mandate we might actually wash off some of that stain left on our face by Mr Bush, and Mr Obama might just get a second term. What am I talking about, of course he will. No contender has even had the "equipment" to step out and say they are running against him.  The election is NEXT YEAR.   Come on Rush, come on Newt, come on Romney, Palin?  - What... what.

Alright, if we go into a double dip recession then they might try it. But all this public union busting has got them looking more evil than the most egregious of the teatards.

Keep your eye on the renewable sector tomorrow morning.  Top picks from me, Abound Solar, First Solar, Ascent Solar, Nano Solar, Advanced Energy, Vestas Wind, Iberdrola, and (even though they have received much negative attention lately) - General Electric.
 
Btw, what happened to being pissed off at AIG? GE may have received some back scratching from their well plumped congress people but I didn't see them getting the kind of unthinkably large bailouts some of those other giants got.  AIG is  old news I suppose, on to hating the next one. If we are going to talk about something over coffee tomorrow please let it be California and Jerry Brown's pending pen strokes!

PSA - Hey, if you like this website and want me to keep doing it support me by following TPG on facebook, sharing this or any post on your wall or, if you have some extra cash drop it in the tip jar (above the bearded bicycle gear man in the sidebar ----->).  Consider this as bad as my annual public-radio-like fund drive will ever get. I used to call them "the talkers" on PBS - "Mom make the talkers go away!" - Now I'm a talker : / but worse because you won't even get a DVD of Celine Dion fist pounding her chest for 2 hours with your donation. 

ABOUND SOLAR

I have written about this company 6 times over the last 3 years and each time I've thought they were near an IPO. Today I heard the first hint of news indicating the possibility for this fledgling solar cell company from Fort Collins, Colorado. The CEO of  Abound Solar - Tom Tiller - was quoted in this article indicating an IPO as something that might happen in the near future.  Perhaps I need to do a little source checking here as he is either misquoted or really does sound like a business-robot.

He said...

"We hit the knowledge to acquire this consort and create continuance in this process. If things go substantially and business markets are cooperative, as we intend toward the latter conception of incoming year, we strength study an IPO"

If I can translate to English, I think he is saying that  the technology they have developed has finally proven cost effective enough to warrant further expansion and possibly a public offering of  stock.  I'm not sure what language he is speaking in the last sentence but it seems positive.


The take home message?  Keep your eye out for this company going public soon.  Why?

Look at their biggest rival First Solar. This is what it did within the first year after going public.

$25 to over $300 a share in just over a year.

Free Energy

For the sake of making the hidden abundance of energy on earth more widely known we present a part of the popular film Zeitgeist addendum.

Disclaimer. Admittedly the Zeitgeist films feel like left wing propaganda but there seem to be some valid points embedded within a cloud of preachyness.



Lighting a 60 Watt bulb for 1 hour uses 216,000 Joules. One zetaJoule is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Joules. this amount of energy could light one 60 Watt bulb for every human on earth continuously for 79 years.

ABOUND SOLAR - Named a Top Startup 2008

The excitement surrounding Abound Solar and the potential for this company to bring down the cost of solar generated power on a global scale is at a fever pitch. Generating electricity at about $1 per Watt would serve as a great equalizer in an energy starved world.

I am not an economist or a stock broker but I must say that the odds that an onslaught of recently liquidated capital might flow into this promising company are high. A torrent of naysayers and worrywarts that recently yanked their assets from the ailing international banks and other old-timey blue chips are chomping at the bit to sew their wild renewable energy oats. This sets the stage for a perfectly poised flood of money which would reinvigorate and essentially recreate the economic landscape. Enter: Abound Solar and other companies like them such as Vestas - the wind energy people.

Business Week Online announced Abound Solar as one of the 25 most successful startups of 2008. Business week cites the fact that Abound raised over $104 million in venture capital in 2008 making it the most lucrative start-up in the state of Colorado.

Abound is using an old American invention to make their magic - the assembly line. By passing panes of regular window glass through a series of extremely hot vacuum chambers various chemical solids are sublimed onto the glass to form a series of photovoltaic thin films and the process of producing cheap solar cells is manifested. Owning proprietary rights to some steps in sealing off the cadmium telluride/cadmium sulfide within a glass sandwich is really what makes the company viable. Watch the assembly line in action within this blog post on Solar Power Authority.

Carl Sagan began an episode of Cosmos with the following assertion - “We wish to pursue the truth no matter where it leads, but to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact. The cosmos is full beyond measure with exquisite relationships of the awesome machine of nature.”

As we speculate on the success of new energy technology there is hope that human interrelationships with the machine of nature will approach a state of sustainability where humanity can thrive.

Stay tuned for updates about abound solar on Tom Paine's Ghost!

See Abound solar on CNN and their website.