Abound Solar, Inc. was awarded a $400 million loan guarantee courtesy of you and me and has now suspended operations. They plan to declare bankruptcy. They borrowed $70 million against that guarantee, but taxpayers will still be out $40 million. It turns out, its solar panels were too expensive to compete. Gee - who would have thought it? Bloomberg: Abound borrowed about $70 million against the guarantee, the Loveland, Colorado-based company said today in a statement. It plans to file for bankruptcy protection in Wilmington, Delaware, next week. The failure will follow that of Solyndra LLC, which shut down in August after receiving a $535 million loan guarantee from the same U.S. Energy Department program. Abound stopped production in February to focus on reducing costs after a global oversupply and increasing competition from China drove down the price of solar panels by half last year. "Aggressive pricing actions from Chinese solar-panel companies have made it very difficult for an...(Read Full Post)