RenewableEnergyWorld.com learned late Tuesday evening that SES had filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and was going into liquidation.

SES had deployed a pilot project using its stirling engines in early 2010 with the 1.5-MW Maricopa Solar Plant in Arizona. But the company was ultimately unable to compete with the cost of PV and filed bankrupty documents with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware last week. 

In 2008, SES was slated to supply its dish-engine technology to a huge 850-MW power plant in San Bernadino County, California. The project developer Tessara Solar, however, sold the project — known as Calico Solar — to K Road Power Holdings in late October 2010 right after it had received all necessary approvals from the California Energy Commission. K Road then announced that 750 MW of the 850-MW project would be developed using PV instead of CSP. K Road said that it would still use next-generation SES dish-engine technology for phase two of the project, which included the last 100 MW.

Following that announcement, in December 2010, Southern California Edison terminated the PPA it had signed for Calico Solar. In early 2011, project developers reportedly sought a loan guarantee for the project, which had been scaled down to 663 MW, but had not yet received one.

With no offtake agreement and unable to raise the funds to develop the project, it seems unlikely that Calico Solar will be built. A source familiar with the project indicated that no more than two CSP projects would ever be completed (in Calif.) because the cost of the technology is just too high when compared with PV.

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