Turbine maker One Energy poised for growth after rough stretch

A year and a half after it nearly filed for insolvency, wind turbine builder One Energy is growing again and poised to expand into other states. The company, which built wind turbines supplying electricity needs for Whirlpool Corp., Ball Corp. and Valfilm in Findlay, laid off 46 of 60 employees in late 2019. Today, it is back up to 35 employees and plans to have about 60 by year-end. "It's a story that we're proud of," said Jereme Kent, chief executive officer of One Energy. "We got within a week of losing the company and then either filing insolvency or handing the company over to our lenders." Getting into rough financial straits was easy enough. "We were doing some pretty aggressive financial restructuring while doing some pretty aggressive growing and when those two things get out of sync, we didn't have a big enough balance sheet to ride through that problem," Kent said. "Each of our turbines is roughly $3 million apiece. So it's very easy to get out over your skis as you do grow if you don't have the right capital (sources of cash) lined up. So we thought we had a capital provider lined up and they pulled out on closing day, and we didn't have a big enough of a balance sheet to recover from that without going through a restructuring." Getting out of the trouble was not so easy. "It's tough because if you dwell in the moment then don't work on fixing the problem, it becomes a self-defeating cycle," he said. "As much as it is absolutely horrible to have lost valuable team members, we couldn't stop to let that be the end of us." "So you go home, you do your bits of reflection at night. You make sure you stay as centered as you possibly can," he said. "You come back to work the next day and fight again." Kent and other One Energy officials faced a lot of rejection as they sought others to invest in the company or to lend it cash. "Hundreds of times, myself and my leadership team were told, 'No' or 'It's not going to work' or 'You're too far gone,'" Kent said. "It takes a lot to hear 'No' a couple hundred times and then keep calling the next guy and keep making the pitch. Ultimately we were able to do it. But that is a very uncomfortable process that wears on you." He quoted Winston Churchill: "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." One Energy eventually found the needed sources of capital last year and started its comeback. The company is optimistic that it will be announcing two or three projects soon. "We never doubted that we had a good business model," Kent said. "We're back and we're growing." One Energy is unique in the wind energy industry. "We are the smallest of the big guys," Kent said. "We are about the smallest company out there that is building, owning and operating big wind turbines. Most of these guys are doing 100-, 200-turbine-type projects, like projects you see over in Van Wert (County) or down in Hardin (County)." Those companies are supplying energy to the electric grid. One Energy builds and owns turbines on the site of its industrial customers, like Whirlpool, Ball and Valfilm. It has customers as far south as Greenville and as far west as Paulding and the Van Wert area. It offers industrial customers a flat rate on their electricity for 20 years, a huge comfort to those customers. "It's a much more complicated project and we do much more of that project," Kent said.