As the latest casualty at a challenging time for the U.S. solar industry, solar design and manufacturing firm tenKsolar is going through big changes.
pv magazine staff had heard rumors that tenKsolar was “winding down” and exploring the possibility of liquidation last Friday, but to date there has been no bankruptcy filing. Instead, the company has stated that the company is undergoing a “restructuring”, and has appointed a Chief Restructuring Officer.
TenKsolar did not provide additional details.
TenKsolar is perhaps best known for its pre-engineered module mounting solutions, but also made modules, with manufacturing in China and Thailand. The company’s headquarters are in Minnesota, and while the state employment agency has not reported any filings under federal laws which require employers of more than 50 workers to give notice of layoffs, Greentech Media is reporting that 2/3 of the company’s staff is being laid off, with the rest to be let go by the end of June.
It is clear that layoffs are already occurring, as the company’s main marketing contact has been let go. Greentech Media also reports that failure with microinverters sourced from a vendor were the cause of “catastrophic” failures at the company’s projects.
TenKsolar’s restructuring comes on the heels of bankruptcies at Sungevity and Heliopower, as well as significant layoffs at REC Solar and Spruce Finance, in what has already been a challenging first half of the year for the domestic solar industry. As further evidence of this, deployments of distributed solar PV at Tesla/SolarCity have fallen 30% year-over-year.
We will update this article as more information regarding the situation at tenKsolar becomes available.
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