Solyndra: From Stealth to Limelight

Solyndra made a splash when it came out stealth mode earlier this month, announcing $1.2 billion in contracts with Solar Power Inc. and Phoenix Solar.

It had kept notoriously quiet before then, in spite of a peppering of provocation from Green Light bloggers Eric Wesoff and Michael Kanellos (see Green Light posts here, here, here, here and here).

Why the sudden change of heart?

J. Kelly Truman, vice president of marketing, sales and business development at Solyndra, said at Solar Power International on Monday that the company decided to start talking to help its customers sell their systems.

“We began revenue shipments in July, so this is our first full quarter,” he said. “It’s getting to where if they want to sell big systems, we’ve got to come out.”

The company didn’t really need the publicity before, he said.

“We were able to hire a lot of good people, raise money and get customers,” he said. “We can deal with a relatively small number of customers directly. We just wanted to do it without a lot of noise.”

To read more about Solyndra, check out these Greentech Media stories: Solyndra Still Raising Cash, Solyndra Increases Beta Testing, Solyndra Rolls Out Tube-Shaped Thin Film and Solyndra Plans Huge Thin-Film Factory.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 2:08 pm and is filed under PV, Solar Power International, Thin Film. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.