Xtreme Power to Cut 63 Jobs

Unless you spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the energy industry and the best ways to manage and store power the odds are good that you have never heard of Xtreme Power. For those of you who are not familiar with the company lets begin by looking at how the company has chosen to describe itself, “Founded in November 2004, Xtreme Power^® (XP^®) designs, engineers, manufactures, and operates integrated energy storage and power management systems, called Dynamic Power Resources^®(DPR^®), for Independent Power Producers, Transmission and Distribution Utilities, and Commercial & Industrial End Users, among others. The DPR offers more than just the ability to time-shift power, but also the opportunity to utilize the fast-responding and configurable digital system to simultaneously perform many services demanded by the energy market. For this reason, customers can respond to an ever-changing market while extracting the most value out of the same proven XP technology. Headquartered in Kyle, Texas, XP manufactures at locations in Texas and Oklahoma.”

The company is dropping 63 workers from its Grove  facility due to a drop in demand for the batteries that this facility produces. These job cuts are enough to qualify as a mass layoff action under the current federal guidelines. For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action here is a look at how the company chooses to describe itself, “The Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) program collects reports on mass layoff actions that result in workers being separated from their jobs. Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.”

This is, as you may have imagined, not the only company in the power game to make cuts. For those of you who missed out on our earlier cuts to Vestas Wind Systems here is an excerpt that will get you up to speed in no time at all, “The company is getting ready to make a substantial round of job cuts, about 3,000 when all is said and done in order to cut back on its expenses and make the company more profitable That move, which is set to impact about twenty percent of the staff of the company when all is said and done.”

Another company in the same industry that made recent cuts was SunPower, “The company is getting ready to get rid of a significant amount of their workers in order to the company’s most recent release, which was titled SunPower Plan to Streamline Manufacturing Operations, Lower Costs and Improve Efficiency, the company will be making in the near future, “SunPower Corp. (NASDAQ: SPWR) today announced a reorganization plan to restructure its Philippines manufacturing operations and reduce its workforce. As part of this initiative, the company will temporarily idle six of the 12 lines in its Fab 2 cell manufacturing plant and 20 percent of panel manufacturing in the Philippines to significantly reduce inventory, lower operational costs and improve efficiency. As a result, the overall blended utilization for the fourth quarter will be approximately 60 percent.  Additionally, the company will reduce its workforce by approximately 900 employees with the reductions occurring primarily in the Philippines.”