Published

1 year ago

December 24, 2024

Alice Rush

FREYR Battery has entered into an agreement to acquire the U.S. solar manufacturing assets of Trina Solar.

The transaction is subject to certain customary conditions precedent, including receipt of certain third-party consents, completion of the preferred stock issuance to Encompass Capital Advisors and internal reorganization to be completed by Trina Solar. It is expected to close by year’s end.

Under the terms of the agreement, FREYR will acquire Trina Solar’s 5 GW solar module manufacturing facility in Wilmer, Texas, which started production earlier this month. The facility is expected to ramp up to full production next year with 30% of estimated production volumes backed by firm offtake contracts with U.S. customers.

Upon closing of the transaction, FREYR plans to execute a multi-phase strategy to establish a vertically integrated U.S. solar manufacturing footprint. The next phase of the plan will be to construct a 5 GW solar cell manufacturing facility in the U.S. Site selection is underway.

Under the terms of the transaction agreement at closing, the total consideration to Trina Solar will consist of $100 million of cash, $50 million repayment of an intercompany loan, $150 million loan note, 9.9% of FREYR outstanding common stock and an $80 million convertible loan note that would convert into an additional 11.5% of FREYR outstanding common stock after certain conditions are satisfied.

FREYR has secured a $100 million commitment for the issuance of preferred stock to Encompass Capital Advisors and $14.8 million for a private placement of 7% of FREYR outstanding common stock to Chunyan Wu, a co-founder and shareholder of Trina Solar.

Daniel Barcelo, FREYR’s current chairman of the board, has been appointed CEO. Tom Einar Jensen, FREYR’s co-founder, will assume the role of CEO of FREYR Europe and will oversee the optimization and monetization of FREYR’s European portfolio. Jensen is stepping down from FREYR’s board of directors to focus on FREYR’s European portfolio. All these changes are effective immediately.

Joining FREYR upon closing will be Mingxing Lin, who has been appointed the company’s chief strategy officer, and Dave Gustafson, who has been appointed COO. Lin has been appointed a nominee to FREYR’s board of directors subject to closing of the transaction.

W. Richard Anderson, currently the CEO of Coastline Exploration, has been appointed to FREYR’s board, effective immediately.

The company has terminated its SemiSold technology license with 24M Technologies. Pursuant to the termination of the license agreement, FREYR has no remaining financial obligations to 24M and no longer holds any equity ownership interest in 24M.

“We are pleased to announce this transformative transaction, which will immediately position the Company as one of the leading solar manufacturing companies in the U.S.,” says Barcelo.

“We are proud to be partnered with Trina Solar, a global manufacturing and solar technology leader. Domestic manufacturing capacity for solar and batteries is essential for energy transition and job creation. The U.S. was once the global leader in solar, and it can be again.”

Santander served as financial advisor. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom served as U.K. legal advisor. Arnold & Porter, Ernst & Young, Clean Energy Associates and Rystad Energy served as advisors to FREYR in support of the transaction. Dorsey & Whitney served as U.S. legal advisor, CICC served as financial advisor and Deloitte served as tax advisor to Trina Solar.

The post FREYR Battery Acquires Trina Solar’s U.S. Manufacturing Assets appeared first on Solar Industry.

FREYR Battery Acquires Trina Solar’s U.S. Manufacturing Assets

Renewable Energy

Homeschooling

Published

21 hours ago

March 1, 2026

Alice Rush

Decent and intelligent people respect the rights of parents to homeschool their children, but there are two reasons for concern: a) socialization, failure to expose children to their peers, so that they may make friends and come to understand the norms of society, and b) the quality of the education itself.

Almost all homeschooling in the United States is conducted on the basis of a radical rightwing viewpoint, normally a blend of evangelical Christianity and Trumpism.

Homeschooling

Renewable Energy

The Positive Effects We’ve Had on Others Are Profound, Whether We Know It or Not

Published

1 day ago

February 28, 2026

Alice Rush

There’s a theory that most people underestimate the positive effects they’ve had on other people.

Yes, that’s the theme of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” but it’s also the core of the 1995 film “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” in which a music teacher who deemed that his life had been a failure because he never completed writing a great symphony, is gently and beautifully corrected. Please see below.

The Positive Effects We’ve Had on Others Are Profound, Whether We Know It or Not

Renewable Energy

Renewable Energy Concepts Can’t Violate the Laws of Physics

Published

2 days ago

February 28, 2026

Alice Rush

In the early days of 2GreenEnergy, my people and I were vigorously engaged in finding solid ideas in cleantech that needed funding in order to move forward.

I vividly remember a conversation with a guy in Maryland who was trying to explain the (ostensible) breakthrough that he and his team had made in hydrokinetics. When I was having trouble visualizing what we was talking about, he asked me to “think of it as a river in a box.”

“Oh!” I exclaimed. “You mean you take a box full of standing water, add energy to it get it moving, then extract that energy, leaving you with more energy that you added to it.”

“Exactly.”

I politely explained that the laws of physics, specifically the first and second laws of thermodynamics, make this impossible.

He wasn’t through, however, and insisted that, in his office, his people had constructed a “working model.”

Here’s where my tone descended into something less than 100% polite. I told him that he may think he has a working model, but he’s wrong; if he believes this, he’s ignorant; if he doesn’t, but is conducting this conversation anyway, he’s a fraud.

“But don’t you want to come see it?” he implored.

“No. Not only would not fly across the country to see whatever it is you claim to have built, I wouldn’t walk across the street to a “working model” of something that is theoretically impossible.”

—

I tell this story because the claim made at the upper left is essentially identical. You’re pumping water up out of a stream, and then claiming to extract more energy when the water flows back into the stream.

Of course, social media today is rife with complete crap like this. We’ve devolved to a point where defrauding money out of idiots is rapidly replacing baseball as our national pastime.