Solyndra and Cheap Solar

I used to drive past Solyndra sometimes. Its on 880 in Milpitas, next to Tesla's main factory. Solyndra manufactured solar cells in strips, using rare earth elements mined only in China. They planned to make cheap solar panels that lie flat on the rooftop and don't need tracking mechanisms (thus little maintenance) using curved reflectors to always bounce light onto the solar cell. A good idea, but the Rare Earths were the problem. They used copper indium gallium selenide if I remember correctly. Selenium and copper are common nutrients, in the correct state, but Gallium and Indium are rare earths. The Chinese suddenly stopped exporting Gallium and Indium and Solyndra couldn't make the solar cells, keep their employees, or pay their creditors. Throwing money at it didn't fix the problem and half a billion vanished and remains unaccounted for, though I recall the news was reporting it had disappeared in Brazil. Scandal erupts, and Obama gets re-elected anyway. Can you say Media Bias? The really sad thing? Several of my coworkers had applied there for jobs, but eventually declined them. Said it was fishy. My problem with them was their production method meant the workers were inhaling the fumes from those rare earths, some of which are isotopes (radioactive). It would have been a deadly job. It would have killed you.

The terrible tragedy is that they could have shifted production to another method and been fine. It would mean changing the formula to Selenium Arsenic, but those are locally available and cheap and not rare. You can pull them right out of the river water, and in the Bay Mud. The reflector thing was fine, as it was. Just change the solar cell to a new composition and presto, solution. That's what I would do. They could have avoided all that trouble if they'd paid any attention to the advancements in Solar and stopped being so stuck on their own patent. Solve the problem, dummies.

At my former employer, a coworker of mine explained that there were some amazing and not terribly expensive labor saving devices and chemicals which would cut 25% of our production time and material handling costs, as well as make a long and nasty process obsolete. She did her homework, made a presentation and the company turned her down because it would have added 15% to the material cost of the product, except it was cutting labor costs and turn around time by 25%. Shipping time was a critical number the executives cried about constantly, working people so hard they were quitting. I think that company behaved childishly, and most of the executive decisions showed turf battles rather than finding solutions. The Easy solution was there. They wouldn't do it, and their business suffered.

My friend? She found a job that paid double offering those kinds of solutions to more flexible and grown up organizations, ones that want to solve problems instead of throw childish tantrums. Smart woman. I respect her.

There is plenty of dumb in the world. You only hurt yourself when you leave them in charge. Extracting yourself from dumb is really important, for your own health and welfare. I regret staying with that company as long as I did, but I kept being Optimistic, thinking they couldn't possibly get worse. I was wrong. I learned a lot from that mistake. One should always learn from one's mistakes, else one will repeat them.