first published week of: 03/10/2014
Silent Power, a startup piloting combined solar PV-battery storage projects in California and its home state of Minnesota, has gone out of business, according to a news report. It’s not the first energy storage startup to fail -- and with the market for grid-scale storage still in its infancy and profitable models to commercial-scale deployment still unclear, it may not be the last.
Silent Power closed its doors in the last week of January, according to the Brainerd Dispatch newspaper. The reason, according to CEO John Frederick, was the failure of investor and strategic partner Hanwha Group to provide an additional round of funding to keep the business afloat.
The South Korean industrial conglomerate invested $8 million in Silent Power in mid-2012, with plans to bring a combined solar-battery-inverter commercial offering to market via its solar business unit, Hanwha SolarOne. Frederick told the Brainerd Dispatch that Hanwha’s decision not to provide additional funding forced the startup to wind down operations, with plans for its secured lender, the Initiative Foundation, to sell the company’s assets and intellectual property, including software and hardware designs. continued…