Closed For The Season (or for good?)

US Green Energy has “temporarily shutdown” due to “high electric costs”. It’s a lot easier to blame something else, folks.

Power bills blamed on temporary shut down

(Register & Bee article, paywall may apply unless you break through it)

Bob Bennett just served up a crock of horsecrap and the R&B reporter swallowed it. It’s not the first time that has happened.

In mid-July, some members took a tour of the US Green Energy building and SouthsideCentral came along. I was the only reporter to ask questions. Bob Bennett told us that US Green Energy had enough cash to last to the end of the year if they didn’t get any product orders in. Hey, Lookie! The end of the year came and Bob shut it all down. What a coincidence.

Let’s look at some of Bob’s claims in the article that went unchallenged…

• His claim of “high electric rates” is horsecrap. He says it would cost an additional $800 to heat the building per month. That building is a giant metal structure. There’s no way in hell that building could be heated for $30 a day. he’s pulling that number out of his ass.
• Let’s say that his electric bill went up to that $2300 level. Lots of businesses have electric bills at that level. If US Green Energy is producing solar panels for customers and selling them, it’s safe to believe that they’d be making enough income to cover that expense. Translation: They weren’t producing solar panels.
• His “high” electric bill was $700 when they had no orders and weren’t producing any solar panels. He claims the rates moved his bill to $1500. I’ve seen that equipment (and you’ll see it too in an upcoming PhotoCentral article). That machinery would use a lot more electricity than that if it was operating. Translation: That machinery wasn’t running.
• During our interview session, Bennett said that he had salesmen working with prospective customers to get solar panel orders. If any of those orders came through, he’d be running an assembly line. When I asked about the probability of those orders coming through, he never directly answered that question. He said one assembly line (and they only had one) could produce around 50 solar panels an hour. When he said a typical order would be 10000 solar panels, I quickly did the maths and said “But that’s just 200 hours of work? You’ll have to have a lot of those typical orders coming in to keep the assembly line going?” I got no response to that question. Translation: Those orders never came through.
• Bennett said that he had “20-30 employees”. When we toured the plant, he had 6 people working and those were hired through Ameristaff. Translation: Based on all of the other horsecrap that I’ve heard, I don’t believe this either.

US Green Energy has been a company that never lived up to any of its promises and is a Job Bust. They’re on the hook for three more installments to pay their Tobacco Commission grant funds back. Danville is on the hook if they miss a payment. The only reason that they had enough money to make payment #1 is that they sold their building to one of their investors and used that cash. The city can sue them if they miss a payment, but Bob Bennett and US Green Energy have had eight months to make themselves as judgment-proof as possible.

I’ve heard too many broken promises, vague answers and lies to believe anything that this company or spokesman is saying anymore. I don’t think that US Green Energy will reopen from their “winter shutdown”. I don’t think that Bob Bennett will ever come back to Danville. I think the city (and that means the taxpayers) are going to be stuck with paying over $1,000,000 back to the Tobacco Commission.

Here’s the banner that they had on the wall the day of the tour.

Unfortunately, I don’t anymore.