By Robert Bradley Jr.
“Profuse government grants, loans, and tax breaks supported Sunnova from the beginning. The public needs to know where the money went and why founder/CEO John Berger and a few others at the top made out like bandits, while just about everyone else bit the dust.”
Sunnova was all hat, no cattle. All sizzle, no steak. Long on DEI, short on profits. Long on government, short on consumer value.
And a lot of “Net Zero” for investors. And potentially voided contracts for more than 400,000 rooftop customers if tax credits go away under current legislation under debate. [1]
Yesterday, Sunnova International declared bankruptcy, or in their Enronish PR world, “Strategic Action to Facilitate Value-Maximizing Sale Process.”
The company never had a quarterly profit, existing on political fumes and gullible “green” customers.
CNBC reported:
Sunnova Energy said on Sunday it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States, as the residential solar panel installer buckled under the pressure of mounting debt and weakening demand. Shares were down 36.4% at 14 cents in premarket trading….
The company listed its estimated assets and liabilities in the range of $10 billion to $50 billion and has a total debt of $10.67 billion as of December 31, according to a court filing.
Sunnova said last week it would lay off about 55% of its workforce, or 718 employees, in a bid to cut spending. Earlier this month, its unit, Sunnova TEP Developer, had also filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
The company’s bankruptcy filing comes at a time when the U.S. residential solar energy industry is under immense pressure from higher interest rates; a reduction in incentives in the top market, California; and fears of subsidy rollbacks for clean energy.
President Donald Trump’s administration, which is pushing to maximize oil and gas production, canceled a partial loan guarantee of $2.92 billion last month that was awarded to Sunnova by the Biden administration.
Last year, peer SunPower, once a pioneer of the U.S. residential solar market, also collapsed following a subpoena from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission about its accounting practices and the departure of its CEO.
Companies that put solar panels on U.S. homes said last month a Republican budget bill that has advanced in Congress could deal a massive blow to the industry by eliminating a generous subsidy for homeowners that had buttressed the industry’s growth.
Reuters reported on the wider problem of the rooftop play, Solar Bankruptcies Show US Clean Energy Industry is Teetering on the Brink.” John Berger and the solar cronies owe taxpayers and customers a lot of money–and letters of apology.
Sunnova History
Profuse government grants, loans, and tax breaks supported Sunnova from the beginning. The public needs to know where the money went and why John Berger and a few at the top made out like bandits (rent-seeking), while just about everyone else bit the dust.
My previous Sunnova posts at MasterResource tell the rest of the story:
- Sunnova EVP’s Exit: Self-adulation Within a Taxpayer Bubble June 4, 2025
- Sunnova Hype pre-Bankruptcy May 8, 2025
- Sunnova’s Net Zero for Stockholders (last ESG report of a ‘second-hander’ company) May 7, 2025
- John Berger: “Lifetime Achievement Award” for Sustainable Energy Future April 1, 2025
- Sunnova Going Solyndra? (Enron-ex John Berger owes taxpayers a bundle) February 12, 2025
- Sunnova’s Rooftop Solar: Selling a Bad Product Requires …. April 25, 2019
Industry-leading Adaptive Energy Services Company?
Sunnova’s boilerplate language should perhaps be removed given the perilous legal waters that the company is in. The bankruptcy press release ended:
Sunnova Energy International Inc. (NYSE: NOVA) is an industry-leading adaptive energy services company focused on making clean energy more accessible, reliable, and affordable for homeowners and businesses. Through its adaptive energy platform, Sunnova provides a better energy service at a better price to deliver its mission of powering energy independence™. For more information, visit http://www.sunnova.com.
—————————–
[1] “Sunnova intends to continue to monitor, manage, and service solar and storage systems in the ordinary course during the sale process,” yesterday’s press release stated. “The Company plans to communicate directly with customers regarding any material changes that may impact the service and support provided by Sunnova.”
The risk for stranded customers falls to TEPH Subsidiary and ATLAS SP Partners–if they go bust with many contracts that have a decade or more to run, then the customers get to go through some more anxiety and loss. Expect a lot of solar panels to go bad and roof repairs to jump.
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Actually Solar Bankruptcies show the entire industry is wholly propped up on the back of government subsidizations and start failing simply with the threat of their removal.
Hmmm, I wonder how many Solar Companies also received black funding via USAID?
Oh Please Brian “Government subsidizations” NO NO government has any money, no how, no where, no way. It’s all our stolen money by taxation.
Sorry to be twerp
After decades of deficit spending its hard to call government funding “our stolen money” anymore. It will be my children’s stolen money if they decide to pay the debt.
Or global bankruptcy AKA “the great reset” with everyone except a few “elites” screwed.
Can’t they just jack up the fickles prices during the transition to cheap electricity?
Electricity price hikes spark concerns over Western Australia’s coal plant closures | Watch
Just some short term pain for all that long term gain the experts have promised us.
Oh dear nasty people are using hate speech again-
Calling us Nimbys is ‘hate speech’, say campaigners
Off to the Re-education Camp with them-
Miliband’s £14 Billion Nuclear Boost to Avert Net Zero Blackouts – The Daily Sceptic
By the time that is up and running it will be too late. Too many morons of all parties in parliament have been running scared of nuclear for far too long. That 14 bilion would have been better invested in SMRs and produced quicker results.
Just remember energy security is national security-
Rachel Reeves announces £16.7 billion for nuclear projects across UK | Watch
The 14 billion would be best employed in rejuvenating existing coal plants and building modern HELE plants to last another 60 years, together with gas backup during downtimes. Cheap solar only exists between 10am -3pm on sunny days, the rest of the day they are either unreliable or very expensively useless for generation. In the absence of efficient long-life batteries- they may come eventually- rooftop solar cannot guarantee power during peak usage times, that’s when power companies make their money by charging high rates when you need power the most.
HELE??
High Efficiency Low Emissions (HELE)
In a HELE coal power system, components operate at higher steam temperatures and pressures, enhancing efficiency.
Thank you.
Even between 10am and 3pm solar is unreliable and hence expensive. It is never cheap. Any passing cloud can, with no notice whatsoever, cause solar output to drop, sometimes to near zero.
Then there’s the 50-75% seasonal drop in Capacity Factor from a meager 26% in summer (solar prime season) down to less than 10% in Winter. And an even further general reduction which is latitude dependent
Only a problem if you advocate both solar electricity and electric heat at the same time – nobody’s that unwise, right?
Sun light and wind are free.
Everything else associated with it is expensive and unreliable.
They are free but neither is dependable “On Demand”
You can’t add more solar fuel when it becomes unavailable
You can’t add or remove more wind when it’s somewhere outside the goldilocks zone.
They’re also backing Rolls Royce for £2.5B (so far) for SMRs
Or ask the South Koreans to build several large reactors at roughly the same cost and which average 4.5 year builds. Sticking with EDF design given the overruns at Hinckley is plain stupid!
Does the difference in time and cost relate to “built by brand” or does it relate to “built in country”?
I’d rather live in South Korea than in North Korea, but I wouldn’t choose either over UK (all else equal).
As for Nimbys, when a solar “farm” was built next to my ‘hood in ’12, in low income rural central Wokeachusetts- where many were built- enviros and elites called me a Nimby when I argued against it- but when they started being built or planned near them- amazing, they turned into Nimby hypocrites.
Mr. Z: Who can forget Ted Kennedy et al opposing windmills off shore where his dad ran rum from Canada.
As I recall, his problem with them was that they could be seen from the Kennedy compound.
Teddy was likely seeing double the number.
They were already Nabmy Pambies
Now those hypocrites are Namby Pamby Nimby Hypocrites
Now that they no longer support wind and solar “farms” on the land- nor do most support industrial scale batteries- they ignorantly think putting solar on every roof and over parking lots will lead to Net Zero. I think many also don’t support wind at sea- though that’s what the governor wants.
I recall a while back when the elites stopped any projects for off shore wind at Martha’s Vineyard as is spoiled the view.
Seems there were no protesters when ICE rounded up all the illegal aliens from that turf.
Wind farms in the waters off Kennedy compound?
Recently UK was categorised as the second worst country above Ireland for solar panel operation. Latitude, cloudiness. So what about all these vast solar farms, Millibreeze?
He’s going to dim the Sun…
That should help.
Can you go dim when you already are dim?
Mad Ed can.
That’ll affect the price of Dim Sum
You Win!
Rooftop solar only make sense when governments are trying to run the economy on wind and solar like Australia. It can never compete with coal, gas or nuclear fired generation.
Well, when Australia gets back to the stone age- I’m sure China will be happy to take it over- then move a hundred million people there- and built 1,000 coal burning power plants. Then the white folk of the nation will be the new aborigines- given the least desirable jobs, if any.
Actually, rooftop solar actually makes the most sense of almost all countries in Australia. We have hot, dry summers in many places, and tremendous amounts of A/C going. A/C is used mostly when solar is available. Although I believe solar itself cannot start the compressors in A/C, it runs them well once started up.
Trying to put it on the grid is the stupid part.
they make soft start mechanisms that drastically lower locked rotor amps. they even make compressors for AC that run solely on their dedicated solar panels, although that’s somewhat of a gimmick product for people with no solar experience.
It’s the easiest thing in the world to hook some panels up to a grid tied microinverter (with island protection/cutoff) and lower your electric bill until the wind or hale destroy them. payback time is still 10-12 years.
“payback time is still 10-12 years.”
Yes exactly. Smart engineers need to design a system with payback less than 5 years.
(I don’t know whether that’s possile)
you don’t need smart engineers to shorten the payback period. just devious politicians. that’s what this is all about, right?
Is that likely to be hale hail, or unhealthy hail?
Is that likely to be hale hail, or unhealthy hail?
As long as rooftop solar can be done without mandate or subsidies, ZZW has a valid analysis. The problem is economic more than technical – like if the best solar and batteries grew on trees then everyone should plant them because installation and maintenance costs for “free” rooftop in most places could be on the same scale as “not free” centralized generation and distribution. Now if nuclear plants also grew on trees…
The attached from the link shows the sort of prices Australia has to make household/solar batteries viable:
https://www.aemo.com.au/energy-systems/electricity/national-electricity-market-nem/data-nem/data-dashboard-nem#price-demand
A single unit at a coal station went out yesterday and the grid is in such a poor state that prices rocketed upon as a result.
Rooftop solar with batteries are viable with prices like this.
Around 9pm on a wednesday night the NEM grid and ‘Fuel Mix’ shows it’s running 78% fossil fuels with 6% wind and 15% legacy Snowy Hydro-
AEMO | NEM data dashboard
And the Sun fell out of the sky….
SunnOva
POWERING ENERGY STUPIDITY
Speaking of bankruptcy I note the CCP’s EV industry squabbles are beginning to gain traction with the mainstream media-
China’s Top EV Makers Clash Over Emissions and Price War as Market No. 1 Faces Scrutiny
Ah those inscrutable orientals have been ever so grande to date.
PS: Relax Commies as it’s nothing the artificial central planner’s UK EV market isn’t doing to avoid the 15000 pound fines-
China’s Carmakers Caught in Scam Selling New Cars as Used
Predictable! The entire renewable energy apparatus will eventually come apart. This entire narrative could not stand on its own without government intervention. Lower electricity prices was a bald face lie.
https://climatechangedispatch.com/5-worst-green-energy-projects-biden-funded/
I think this next few years is when we find out:
IF the entire renewable energy apparatus does come apart, then it was probably “crap”
IF the entire renewable energy apparatus does NOT come apart, then it was probably “wise”
I expect it was “crap” but I’ve met lots of people smarter than me.
Their share price shows a nice reverse-inverse hockey stick trend – initial uptick followed by steady decline to net zero.
Nick keeps telling us that renewables are cheap and even free sometimes, so how can they go bankrupt 🙂
“Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them.”
— Margaret Thatcher
“
SocialistAll governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money.“Again, there is a quote at the top of the article that is not attributed. And it doesn’t appear anywhere else in the article that I can see.
Nor in any of the links, except one where is is also quoted from elsewhere.
No schadenfreude here. Real people, well-meaning if gullible, get hurt every time something like this happens.
There’s a place for renewable energy, and for the companies that provide this technology. It’s just at a much smaller scale than the dreamers were expecting.
The only place for Ruinables is in the dumpster of Bad Ideas.
Much, much, smaller.
The only place wind and solar make any sense, is off grid.
Yup.
So what happens to this:
“Enjoy peace of mind knowing your home solar system and battery are covered by Sunnova Protect®, featuring maintenance, monitoring, repairs, and replacements for 25 years.”
The TEPH Subsidiary seems inextricably bound to Sunnova. Atlas SP Partners was set up by Apollo and Credit Suisse to provide funding and capital markets services to companies. It sounds to me like they will have 6-degrees of separation between the homeowner with a busted solar panel.
From the above article’s extract of the CNBC reporting on Sunnova:
“The company listed its estimated assets and liabilities in the range of $10 billion to $50 billion . . .”
Is there any wonder—any wonder at all—why Sunnova went BK given that its accounting department does not know it assets and liabilities to better than +/- $20 billion, equivalent to +/- 67%?
And another sign of company mismanagement: let’s wait until we’re within days of bankruptcy before we begin laying off employees “in a bid to cut spending”.
Just laughable!
I sympathize with the accounting department – it ain’t worth what they paid for it, no depreciation model for capex fits and the aftermarket is nearly nonexistent.
If it weren’t for the pain.
Battery company Powin of Oregon USA declared bankruptcy today.
Company was noted in a WUWT article few days back.
It makes me sad. I don’t like that the alternative energy companies were building sub-optimal technology to harvest subsidies and fight ghost problems BUT smart people dedicated years of work to finding clever ways to arrive at the best possible sub-optimal technology. Imagine if those smart people had been unleashed to find clever ways to solve genuine problems?
What could possibly cause an uncontainable conflagration at an allcomers storage facility?
People left in limbo after fire rips through Storage King facility in Burpengary, north of Brisbane
Sadly if your stored goods are not personally insured by yourself observing certain terms and conditions plus liability insurance that may not be the end of your losses. No doubt the CCTV camera footage has identified the starting unit whereupon the forensic fire investigators can concentrate their efforts. Stay tuned folks.
More good news, you live by the lie it is bound to come back and bite you in the butt. I want my money back.
“Story Tip”
And another one bites the dust …
https://renewablesnow.com/news/battery-storage-firm-powin-files-for-bankruptcy-in-new-jersey-1276731/?utm_edition=202506110305