As to putting “wasted” in hooks, I did so because it was the clear insinuation in the original version of the story, Ms. Fehrenbacher. Even in the current version – in the headline, the summary, the lede, and the closing paragraph – you draw a connection between what happened at Solyndra and what’s happening here. This type of broad-brush reporting only perpetuates the notion that government incentives aimed at bringing manufacturing back to America are a bad idea, and it’s just not that simple. Administered with the correct oversight, incentives work. Solyndra was a boondoggle from the Bush administration’s vetting of it through the Obama admin’s boosting of it, less than a year before it crashed and burned.

While the focus of your story could be the challenges with this particular technology and how the glut of cheap panels from China has commoditized a product that never should have been, it instead implies collusion between the government and companies that are trying to make things better. You admit yourself the Solyndra/Solopower comparison is “an easy [one] to make,” then suggest Solopower may follow in Solyndra’s “infamous” (your word, from your lede) footsteps – despite the fact that they’ve received no federal $ yet, and that Salem has acknowledged (in the Oregonian piece) that it is keeping Solopower on a short leash.