Spin-off from Advanced Energy Industries moves to Windsor

WINDSOR — A spin-off company from Fort Collins-based Advanced Energy Industries Inc. (Nasdaq: AEIS) is moving to Windsor.

The company, Bold Renewables LLC, has begun moving from Fort Collins to a 23,215-square-foot industrial space in Windsor’s Diamond Valley Tech Center. President Brenda Clarke told BizWest the company couldn’t find the right blend of warehouse and office space in Fort Collins.
It also needed to separate itself from its former parent after sharing office and warehouse space in the months after Advanced Energy spun off the company in May 2019.

“Right now, we’re somewhat living in mom’s basement,” she said. “…What we’re looking at doing over the next three years is continuing to do what we’ve always done as a division, now we’re doing it separately as a business.”
Bold Renewables focuses on servicing solar power inverters, the devices that convert a panel’s photovoltaic output for use in the wider power grid. It currently employs about 30 people.
Advanced Energy sold the division to Chicago-based holding company Right Lane Industries and provided the new company with $8.05 million in startup loan options, according to the company’s latest quarterly report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Advanced Energy stopped making and servicing inverters in December 2015, but it hasn’t stopped litigation against the company over product warranties.
One of those lawsuits was filed in 2018 by a contractor on behalf Power Authority of New York, which claims Advanced Energy knew the power inverters it sold to 16 New York City schools with solar paneled-roofs were prone to failure and concealed that information because it was on the verge of spinning off the business.
Advanced Energy has moved to dismiss that case on procedural grounds. The case remains pending trial.
Clarke said she was not aware of the lawsuits. Bold Renewables is not a party to any of the cases. Advanced Energy has said it intends to “vigorously defend itself” against the suits in previous corporate disclosures.
While Bold has yet to specifically determine how it plans to emerge from Advanced Energy’s shadow as a standalone company, Clarke said there may be opportunities to start servicing solar inverters not made by its former parent or finding other revenue opportunities that align with the solar inverter industry.
“I think it is a difficult prospect to be carved out of a larger company and to find yourself as a standalone, so really the next year or two will be spent standing up on our two feet,” she said.

Mike Eyer and Julius Tabert of CBRE represented the landlord, while Joe Palieri of NAI Affinity represented Bold.

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