A lawsuit that has been rumbling for nearly four years has been settled today following the announcement that Chinas Yingli Solar has reached a $7.5 million agreement with Solyndra on an antitrust litigation.
Brought in 2012 a short while after the former Silicon Valley startup had gone bust, the lawsuit was filed against three large Chinese solar companies Yingli Solar, Trina Solar and Suntech alleging each of flooding the U.S. solar market with cheap PV panels in order to wreck Solyndras business model.
At the time, Solyndra accused the three Chinese firms of conspiracy to "dump product at predatory levels" into the U.S. to drive Solyndra and other U.S. solar manufacturers out of business. In fighting the case, Trina Solar settled at $45 million last November in order to "avoid a burdensome and protracted litigation", Chairman Jifan Gao said.
Todays settlement by Yingli comes at a fraction of that cost, but includes the caveat that if Yingli or any of its affiliates total solar panel sales in the U.S. and Canada reaches or exceeds 800 MW in a single calendar year between now and 2018, the company will be liable for a further payment to Solyndra of $10 million.
"While we continue to reject Solyndras claims as baseless," said Yingli CEO and chairman Liansheng Miao, "our team is satisfied with the settlements terms and we are pleased to conclude litigation."
Solyndra was controversially awarded a DOE federal loan guarantee of $535 million in 2011, shortly before the firm went bankrupt following the extension of the U.S. stimulus package. Last summer it emerged that the firm had misled the government in order to secure these funds, with the Energy Departments inspector general claiming that its due diligence work was "less than fully effective" when assessing Solyndras application.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.