Unemployment in Nevada: The Not-So-Bright Future For Solar Company Amonix
Recently, Amonix, a government-supported solar plant, laid off more than 200 of its 300 employees at its manufacturing plant located on North Pecos Road.
It should be noted that many of the 300 employees on Amonix’s payroll were former construction workers. Amonix found that retraining the construction workers was a straightforward process; they already had easily-translatable skills that lent themselves easily to the manufacturing industry.
The $18 million Amonix facility only opened in May 2011, and a little over 6 months later, they slashed their workforce by a huge 66%. Somebody’s profit and loss figures had to be WAAAAAAY off…
Here’s where things get interesting: in 2010, Amonix received almost $6 million in government supported federal stimulus funds (through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act) along with an incentive package that included significant sales and business tax breaks. The company was also financially backed by private capital to the tune of $12 million. One of the conditions for receiving the government’s stimulus funds was that Amonix employs an average of 300 people in five years. So in a way, it’s understandable that Amonix would optimistically choose to meet their workforce quota right out of the gate.
Not so understandable is that Amonix wasn’t able to maintain that workforce quota so soon after its openng. Laying off most of Amonix’s employees only scant months later more than hints at a bigger issue. Perhaps more time should have been spent on how to manage cashflow, rather than on how to get the funding.
If Amonix ends up not maintaining an average workforce of 300 employees, they owe the state money back. That’s all fine and dandy, but if Amonix is REALLY out of true five years from now, how exactly would Nevada (and taxpayers especially, since we ultimately fund stimulus funding) collect on that debt?
Following the massive layoffs, Amonix is understandably panicking retooling and claim that they’ll be hiring again eventually.
Amonix is just one case study: how many other companies have tapped into government-sanctioned funds, only to have to do some major “retooling” after the money’s in the bank?
Instead of funding companies that might be ill-prepared to manage their cashflow, wouldn’t that money be better served to fix some of the real underlying problems that Nevada faces? For example, when it comes to the renewable energy industry, Nevada is attracting many manufacturing hubs, such as Amonix, but we’re not attracting enough renewable energy-related company headquarters. And there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be: geographically-speaking, Nevada is in a prime location, and we could easily become a major hub connecting solar-related companies in California, Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico.
Money could be better spent towards company headquarters recruitment.
As well, it’s common knowledge that Nevada lacks a trained workforce in certain specialized industries; however, as the Amonix case study shows, retraining employees with translatable skills is a creative solution that may be more cost-effective than training an entire workforce from the ground up.
Incidentally, Governor Brian Sandoval was present at Amonix’s plant opening in May of 2011, when the future (all of seven months ago) for the company seemed so bright. It should be noted that Brian Sandoval’s new economic development plan recently unveiled (all of 7 months later) now attempts to address the trained workforce issue and current shortcomings in company headquarters recruitment activities.
Should have thought of that seven months ago, Bri.
Another area that could use some government-sanctioned cash flow is in the assets department. Nevada lacks enough renewable energy-related manufacturing materials (a fact which turned out to be a major fly in Amonix’s ointment). Break us off a piece of that government-sanctioned, incentivized kit kat bar to help solve this problem, and we’d be a shoe-in for becoming leaders in this important industry. We already have the prime location and the potential workforce, so in a very real sense, we need the actual tools to make it happen.
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Born in France and raised in SoCal, Dorian Issock’s reviews, blogs and other literary tidbits appear in Desert Companion Magazine, The New Colonist, Urban Art, and scores of online destinations across the internet. |
11 Responses to Unemployment in Nevada: The Not-So-Bright Future For Solar Company Amonix
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So the financial geniuses at Amonix have now been selected by the Nevada State Office of Energy (NSOE)’s New Energy Industry Task Force (NEITF). They are considered stakeholders, and have been ordered to CREATE THE BUSINESS CASE for NV to be in the business of selling renewable energy to CA–who isn’t interested in buying from us. Amonix gets voting privileges on the NEITF. Ironically, taxpayers and electricity ratepayers (whom one would think are also stakeholders), ARE NOT REPRESENTED. I know. I offered to fill this gaping hole–and my offer was shot down. The NSOE’s NEITF is not the least bit interested in what members of the public think, at their “public” meetings.
Wendy, Amonix has never had a HCPV product that would compete with proven thin film or mono crystalline panels fixed or tracked! It is a fact that any one who backed Amonix didn’t understand their product very well, or… maybe they were getting paid to support the effort somehow? There’s no defense or excuse for what’s been placed in Hatch New Mexico or Alamosa Colorado, both of those power plants WILL be a nightmare to maintain, and the owners NextEra, and Cogentrix will eventually give up. As I said elsewhere, the Hatch power plant is seriously broken, multiple problems, and some of them are the product of unsound engineering, or a complete lack of engineering. There is no reason that Alamosa wouldn’t be the same mess.
Meanwhile.. those who worked in the upper ranks of Amonix are slithering off to new jobs with other companies, and the workers…. fo rthe most part, they knew something was wrong with the bussiness model.
If you think some of these other systems Amonix had.. like the one in Tucson really worked.. I doubt the power sold could pay for the parts and labor to keep them pointing at the sun.. 11 trackers weren’t doing that a few weeks ago!
Go to the El Paso Electric company, and study how they’ve put up power meters for the different Solar power plants they buy from. Everyone should follow suit, we need transparency in this game of Alternative energy.. some of it works, but all too often the wrong people get the money or other favors.
I wonder… how long it’ll be before Spain figures out they have a pile fo junk there?
gbrecke
It seems Dorian hasn’t learned from Amonix, government cannot create jobs and caannot fix the economy.
As you can see from Amooix, all government can do is steal money from productive resources in the private economy and redistribute them to politcal pet projects pushed by special interests that have no real demand for tehm.
The green jobs is a bubble that has popped because the market does not demand it, and as we see with Amonix and Solyndra .. government does not have the power to generate and maintain artificial demand
Dorian has yet to learn that government is the problem, not the solution
John, for your info: if I had to choose, I’d agree with you in saying that the government – as it is now – is the problem, rather than the solution (thanks for TRYING to tell me what I believe, though).
I also agree that government can’t maintain artificial demand; however, I don’t believe that the green bubble has popped already. I personally have hope that there is (or will be) a larger demand for green industries in the U.S. as there are in other parts of the world. We have to catch up and I think it’s inevitable that we eventually will.
Dorian,
Wish you knew more about solar.. it does work.. and it works best when there’s no subsidies or incentives.. The DOE is destroying this industry! I have friends that were making good livings for a long time in Solar PV.. they went from 75K+ a year as small business people to un-employment. Some of them went to work for Amonix..,, but only for a while…
YOU ARE SOUNDING LIKE A BROKEN RECORD.
Ummmmmm – I’ve written about the Amonix case this one time. I’m not exactly sure how that sounds like a broken record.
You may not be concerned that a company lays off 66% of its employees a few months after it opens (that’s the first issue), and that it’s our taxpayers’ money that in part funded the company (second issue).
As a resident of Nevada, I AM concerned about it and therefore found this story worth telling. Hopefully, others – you omitted, of course – will care about the state of unemployment in NV.
Great article, more government waste
I greatly enjoyed this article and Hats off to Dorian for recognizing that there are some fairly serious problems with the Amonix plan.
There are few things better to base decisions on than facts, and as of this date I have been stunned to see the lack of interest in the Amonix facts. Have you seen any article about the power production of the Amonix 7700s? They’ve been in service for a year now… Any one?
Fact is, they are making 58% the promise…just 58% of what typical power plants of ‘proven’ technologies make per MW of installed equipment. And the 7700s are in the process of degrading in performance due to a number of problems. If it had been easy to fix, they would have, it’s likely they’ll need an army to fix things as fast as they break.
It’s easy to fix this kind of problem in the future, ANY AE project that receives a dime of public money in any form WILL have a power meter on line for all who were forced to invest to watch. The power Production contracts between the Power plant owner and the utility WILL be a matter of public record.
Simply vote out of office those who forced you to invest in unproven tech.
It should be obvious, we can not rely on the traditional Media to help protect our interests, go to the Sun, type in Amonix, and follow the story.. I say it was dropped right when a story gets good for the technician.. when we actually have a product in the field to review.
It’s my opinion that the Amonix 7700 was never a viable product, HCPV will NOT compete with other Solar PV technologies for some years. The horror in all this? We now have Millions upon millions invested in what amounts to the first real field trial of this version of the Amonix 7700. The power meter is easy enough to find.
Want to watch the department Energy do the same thing again? Just tune in and see what they’re up to now, and do note, they never look back to see if the corn they planted even sprouted.. they just plant more seed, and some times it’s the same kind that didn’t grow last time.
David.. are you on the pay roll over there? Nevada needs more Dorians!
GET OFF AMONIX CASE OVER AND OVER.
you mean let them rob us?