Low Recoveries in Green Energy Liquidations

There was an article today about power storage company Beacon Power, which agreed to sell its only plant to Rockland Capital for $30.5 million, which will allow a roughly 70 cent recovery on the federal government's loan guarantee.

The recovery on Solyndra is going to be much worse: Obama's energy secretary won't even estimate the recovery, except to say that he is "anticipating that not very much".

One particular reason that recoveries are so low, besides the generalized statement that the assets are really specialized, is that the rate of technological advance is so rapid that the old manufacturing equipment quickly becomes obsolete and useless.

Efficiency in photovoltaic solar keeps increasing: "performance records are occurring across the board in every photovoltaic materials system, from CdTe (Abound) to CIGS (MiaSolé) to GaAs (Alta Devices) to triple-junction CPV cells (Solar Junction and Semprius) to crystalline silicon (SunPower)." (GTM)

So.. if you have plant and equipment that is locked in to early generation PV, it is basically worthless. Especially given the huge overhang of excess capacity in PV solar right now.