Optisolar Lays of 300—Half the Staff—Due to Credit Crunch

Optisolar, which makes thin-film solar panels and builds large solar farms, has laid off around 300 employees, or half of its staff.

The layoffs come because the company -- which came out of seemingly nowhere to become a big player in utility solar parks this past year -- cannot get access to capital.

“We simply couldn’t sustain the level of aggressive growth,� said spokesman Alan Bernheimer.

The company has a somewhat unusual structure. It makes amorphous thin-film solar cells and then uses these cells to build utility-scale solar parks. It then sells the electricity from the parks to utilities.

It currently has two large projects on the books: a 210-megawatt plant in Canada for the Ontario Power Authority and a 550-megawatt plant in California for PG&E. These two projects, in fact, are some of the largest photovoltaic projects in the world. (Solar thermal farms are bigger but rely on different technology.

The Canadian project has already begun construction and the California one is slated to begin next year.