BrightSource Energy

“We had a facility complete with a robotized automated assembly line where we were going to assemble a 173,000 heliostats because it made more sense to assemble and do the manufacturing on site rather than do it remote and take a fragile facility manufactured p…”

“I think if I had something to do over, I would have been more Firm and more strong that the company was facing not just a decision, but an existential risk. And I would have been a lot stronger on that, saying that this company will not exist if we do not move…”

“So silicon PV was around nine dollars a watt, and the tower technology we had was around six dollars a watt, dropping to five dollars a lot. So it was more or less half the price, And it could produce, if you put it in the right site, it could produce at aroun…”

“That's when we basically said, we can no longer win game. We are no longer competitive. And that was a different message. We'd said, well, maybe you could, and you could sell in different attributes. But at that point, we said, this is no longer a competitive …”

“By the time you got to 2009, it was down to maybe three dollars a watt. And three dollars a watt became an interesting number. So, That's when the U.S. Team started to pay attention and say, you know, this is something that is now, it's been cut in half. It's …”

“Ivanpah had some awkward parts ramping up, but ultimately delivered and ramps and produces power and energy today at about 90% of its original design capacity.”

“We happened to have a brown cover to that temporary, 18 month manufacturing facility, and the CEC, California Energy Commission tried to stop all construction, which basically would have killed the project, because the color of the tarp was not the right color…”

“Well, so the engineering team was working really diligently and really hard to do whatever they could on costs, and our costs were going from, say, five dollars a watt to four dollars and 30 cents a watt and maybe down to about three 90 a watt. Meanwhile, at t…”

“If you're asked to develop something that's price is flat to increasing, when your competitor's price is decreasing every day, you're asked to do something you can't win at.”

“And so the tax equity financing component is really important because this point this would have been the largest tax equity financing or was the largest tax equity financing ever done.”

“We also then started and agreed to do what's called a head start program for tortoise, where basically of the eggs that are actually laid only two percent survive. So we took pregnant tortoise, we found them, and we moved them, we took Eggs, we, and we created…”

“All the taxable income of all of the Wall Street banks. So they, their tax equity appetite went from very large to zero, overnight. Everybody was fired from Morgan Stanley, we lost our board member, we lost our tax equity sponsor, and that was the pivotal part…”

“It reduced, it was about a 40% cost reduction from the design alone.”