Abound Solar was a manufacturer of
cadmium telluride modules–a
thin-film photovoltaic technology–based in the United States. It operated a production facility in
Longmont, Colorado
The City of Longmont is a home rule municipality located in Boulder and Weld counties, Colorado, United States. Longmont is located northeast of the county seat of Boulder and north-northwest of the Colorado State Capitol in Denver.
Longmont ...
. The company was incorporated as AVA Solar in 2007 and was rebranded as Abound Solar in March 2009. In 2012 the company laid off almost half its employees before suspending operations and filing for bankruptcy.
History
Abound Solar's founders began researching thin-film deposition since the late 1980s. In 1991, W.S. Sampath, a professor at
Colorado State University
Colorado State University (Colorado State or CSU) is a public land-grant research university in Fort Collins, Colorado. It is the flagship university of the Colorado State University System. Colorado State University is classified among "R1: ...
, patented a process for low-cost metal deposition within a
vacuum
A vacuum is a space devoid of matter. The word is derived from the Latin adjective ''vacuus'' for "vacant" or "void". An approximation to such vacuum is a region with a gaseous pressure much less than atmospheric pressure. Physicists often dis ...
. Al Enzenroth, Kurt Barth, Professor Sampath settled upon
cadmium telluride
Cadmium telluride (CdTe) is a stable crystalline compound formed from cadmium and tellurium. It is mainly used as the semiconducting material in cadmium telluride photovoltaics and an infrared optical window. It is usually sandwiched with cadmi ...
(CdTe) as the ideal photovoltaic material for low-cost solar module production.
By 1998, the team had developed a pilot production process featuring an inline, single-vacuum semiconductor deposition tool. Over the course of the next few years, the team continued to develop and refine the technology with strong support from the
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the US specializes in the research and development of renewable energy, energy efficiency, energy systems integration, and sustainable transportation. NREL is a federally funded research and d ...
(NREL) and the
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...
.
By 2004, the founding team had scaled up the technology glass panels of in size. Federal funding from NREL and the
Solar America Initiative
Solar power includes solar farms as well as local distributed generation, mostly Rooftop solar power, on rooftops and increasingly from community solar arrays. In 2021, utility-scale solar power generated 115 Kilowatt-hour#Multiples, terawat ...
enabled them to prove the viability of the technology. In 2006, AVA Solar, Inc. was formed with private funding from local angel investors to commercialize the technology.
In early 2007, institutional investors discovered the company and the proprietary manufacturing process that had been developed. Abound received a $400 million in loan guarantee from the
U.S. Department of Energy in 2010.
[Audit Report: The Department of Energy's Loan Guarantee to Abound Solar Manufacturing, LLC](_blank)
U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Inspector General. Office of Audits and Inspections, April 2014.
In 2012 the company laid off almost half its employees. On June 28, 2012, Abound Solar announced that it would suspend operations and file for bankruptcy protection.
[
] Abound filed for bankruptcy in July 2012.
Technology
Abound Solar produced cadmium telluride thin-film solar modules using a proprietary closed-space sublimation technology developed at Colorado State University.
Production
In April 2008, Abound Solar took possession of a Longmont, Colorado-area building previously used by Applied Films. Within weeks preparations were made to renovate the facility and construct the largest thin-film solar module manufacturing facility in the United States.
Environmental controversy
In February 2013, the
Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) is the principal department of the Colorado state government responsible for public health and environment
Environment most often refers to:
__NOTOC__
* Natural environment, all liv ...
(CDPHE) issued a compliance advisory (an "informal enforcement action") to the company, requiring that it clean up some 2,000 "unsellable" pallets of solar panels containing
cadmium
Cadmium is a chemical element with the symbol Cd and atomic number 48. This soft, silvery-white metal is chemically similar to the two other stable metals in group 12, zinc and mercury. Like zinc, it demonstrates oxidation state +2 in most of ...
, a toxic carcinogen, as well as drums of cadmium-contaminated fluids.
[Mark Jaffe]
Colorado orders Abound Solar to clean up hazardous waste at four sites
''Denver Post'' (February 25, 2013). The
bankruptcy trustee
A trustee in bankruptcy is an entity, often an individual, in charge of administering a bankruptcy estate.
Canada
In Canada, a licensed insolvency trustee (LIT) is an individual or a corporation licensed by the official superintendent to hol ...
for the company estimated the cost of the cleanup to be $2.2 million.
In July 2013, the ''Denver Post'' reported that the cleanup of the hazardous materials had been completed. It also reported that over 70,000 leftover solar panels, which were found to be viable, were shipped to a company called Best Safety Glass in Singapore.
[Mark Jaffe]
Bankrupt Abound Solar's toxic wastes cleaned at 4 Colorado facilities
''Denver Post'' (July 8, 2013).
See also
*
CdTe photovoltaics
References
{{Solar power in the United States
Thin-film cell manufacturers
Solar energy companies of the United States
Manufacturing companies based in Colorado
American companies established in 2007
Energy companies established in 2004
Manufacturing companies established in 2004
Renewable resource companies established in 2007
2007 establishments in Colorado
Longmont, Colorado