HOMF, which is a subsidiary of Hildene, became involved in March, 2016, committing to an investment of $5 million. Over the course of Altenberg’s relationship with the plaintiffs, they contributed a total of $6,829,500.

Falling apart

In July 2016, everything began to fall apart. Altenberg had overextended himself, purchasing the rights to more projects than he could fund or complete. An expensive order of solar panels turned out to be wrong for the job and had to be sold at a loss; a failed attempted acquisition of DynaSolar; and the inability to meet financial obligations on the Beltline Portfolio, all came to a head.

Altenberg testified that “There was [sic] literally fires going off constantly. Everything was going wrong.”

The Blue Sky projects stalled, many not getting out of the development stage. A dispute between Altenberg and Sunrise Energy resulted in termination of an asset purchase agreement and arbitration. Altenberg refused to pay invoices to DynaSolar totaling more than $1 million, prompting DynaSolar to place liens against the Beltline Portfolio projects and jeopardizing a potential sale of those projects.