There were so many reasons to say no: the eight years of consistent failure, the loan defaults, the shuttered factory, the management turnover.

But when SoloPower Systems called last summer, Oregon answered. The state that already had given the Portland company $13.5 million in tax credits, $10 million in direct financial assistance and millions of dollars' worth of tax breaks ponied up another $641,835 in rent.

Thirteen months later, SoloPower appears to be dead. The state doesn't expect to recoup its loans, and the company owes Multnomah County $1.8 million in property taxes.

In a final twist, the county could seize the company's equipment to cover the unpaid taxes, but it's steeped in a toxic stew of cadmium and hydrochloric acid.

"This stuff is very caustic," said Michael Vaughn, Multnomah County assessor. "And there's lots of it. It's one big mess."

Now the Oregon Secretary of State is questioning the state's decision to help SoloPower with rent, given its "history of loan default, forbearance, and restructuring," according to a newly released audit.

The Department of Energy received no collateral or security for those payments. Instead, agency officials said, it relied on "verbal representations" from SoloPower management that they were close to a deal that would enable it to repay all its debts. It never happened.

What the audit doesn't say is that the Energy Department considered giving SoloPower even more money. The Oregonian/OregonLive has learned that agency officials approached Gov. Kate Brown's staff in September 2017 about an additional investment. Brown's office rejected the plan, said her spokesman Chris Pair.

And now, the Energy Department no longer views the maker of flexible solar panels as a "going concern,' agency spokeswoman Rachel Wray said.

The company's 225,000-square-foot factory in the Rivergate Industrial Park in North Portland is uninhabited. The county can repossess the equipment there because SoloPower failed to pay the taxes on the property near Terminal 6 on North Marine Drive. But it will first have to clean up the toxic waste, which could cost up to $500,000.

It's been eight years since SoloPower arrived in Oregon with technology that promised lighter, thinner solar panels that could be placed on buildings that couldn't support traditional solar panels. The state of Oregon and the city of Portland were eager to back the company that projected as many as 450 manufacturing jobs.

Oregon officials were eager to jumpstart an economy still languishing after the housing crash. The Energy Department loaned the company $10 million, and Business Oregon handed over an additional $20 million in tax credits.

Portland also stepped up, agreeing to cover half of SoloPower's debt to the state if it built its solar panel factory in the city. Multnomah County declared the company's North Portland factory site to be within an enterprise zone, a decision that freed the company from paying property taxes as long as it met certain job creation requirements.

The federal government, meanwhile, agreed in 2011 to furnish $197 million in loan guarantees. In 2011, the California Energy Commission loaned the company nearly $5 million.

SoloPower was small change compared with Oregon's other green energy debacles. The Energy Department's infamous Business Energy Tax Credit program dispensed a billion dollars' worth of tax credits to 14,000 businesses. Later reviews deemed a third of those deals to be "suspicious" and worthy of further investigation.

There were some legitimate reasons to believe SoloPower was the real deal. The company invested heavily in new factory – an estimated $340 million officials said at the time.

Plus, it was backed by Hudson Clean Energy Partners, a deep-pocketed private equity firm.

And yet, SoloPower was also a huge risk. Its technology was untested; the market demand unknown. Plus, SoloPower's products were expensive compared with traditional solar panels.

In April 2013, the company shut down the factory and laid off most of its employees. Three months later, SoloPower stopped making payments on its state loan.

That was enough for the federal government. It immediately withdrew the $197 million in loan guarantees that were on the table.

California also took quick action. The state sued SoloPower in 2013, after the company allegedly defaulted on its loan.

In 2017, Multnomah County sued the company for back taxes. After SoloPower failed to create a minimum number of jobs, it no longer qualified for the property tax breaks, Vaughn explained.

That same year, Portland's $5 million loan guarantee came into play after SoloPower stopped making payments to the state. Because of that guarantee, the city has been paying $119,000 a month to cover SoloPower's debt to the state since April 2017 and will continue to do so until October 2020.

The Energy Department declared SoloPower in default last fall. It has taken no steps to collect the debt.

Then came last July and the urgent plea that SoloPower needed money to cover its rent.

There were ample reasons to turn down the request. As the Secretary of State's audit explains, the company had "defaulted on its loan repayments to (the state) in September 2016 and has not made any repayments since. Further, at the time department management elected to cure the lease defaults, the borrower's property tax payments were delinquent. Multnomah County had the legal right to seize the borrower's equipment for delinquent taxes."

Auditors found no evidence that agency lenders got any collateral in exchange for the additional funds. They never checked with an independent expert, the audit said, and apparently believed the assurances of SoloPower's primary investor Hudson Valley that the refinancing would happen.

Wray, the agency spokeswoman, called it "a tough decision." The company had been in talks with investment banking giant Goldman Sachs on a deal to inject new capital into SoloPower, she said.

"We had multiple discussions with Goldman Sachs from August to October 2017," Wray said. "The investment would have made SoloPower a 'going concern,' meaning it could resume operations; we never saw terms that involved the (state) loan being paid in one fell swoop. Eventually that conversation went quiet, the investment didn't go through, and we don't have any specific information about why."

A commercial lender who once worked for the Energy Department said it was irresponsible for the agency to hand over the last $640,000.

"It was throwing good money after bad," said Dan Weldon, now with Washington Federal Savings Bank in Portland. "At some point, the agency got locked into this enabling relationship with SoloPower. Good, sound risk managers don't do that."

The SoloPower failure will contribute to increasing financial problems at the Energy Department's Small-Scale Energy Lending Program. By 2020, it will no longer have sufficient funds to pay off its debt. The fund needs about $8 million in new capital, the agency says.

-- Jeff Manning