RIGHT SPEAK: SolarCity is $166 Million in the Red after receiving Hundreds of Millions in Federal Grants

SolarCity, a California-based solar energy firm backed by hundreds of millions in federal grants and loans, posted $55 million in losses during 2013 and is running a deficit of more than $166 million, according to an annual financial report released this week.

Still, company officials say the future is looking sunny.

SolarCity founder Elon Musk, left, and Obama

“All our states are doing extremely well and we continue to invest in every state,” said CEO Lyndon Rive in a conference call after the report was released.

TheStreet, a news service devoted to Wall Street, has rated SolarCity’s stock a D+ and urged investors to sell.

“A number of negative factors … could make it more difficult for investors to achieve positive results compared to most of the stocks we cover,” TheStreet wrote. “Among the areas we feel are negative, one of the most important has been very high debt management risk by most measures.”

The annual filing to the Securities and Exchanges Commission, published this week after several delays and an admitted “accounting error” shows plenty of storm clouds on the horizon for the solar energy firm. Chief among the concerns are declining assistance from federal programs designed to prop up alternative energies and cuts in spending like the sequestration in March 2013.

The accounting error stems from a miscalculation of overhead expenses that didn’t have an effect on cash flow, SolarCity reported in a news release earlier in the month.

SolarCity gets two major forms of assistance from the federal government — direct grants that were available through the U.S. Treasury’s Section 1603 program, a part of the federal stimulus from 2009, and investment tax credits that are worth 30 percent of the value of newly installed solar energy systems. So far, the company has received more than $244 million.