Quarterly financial reports from Abound Solar that describe the solar panel maker's troubles with its manufacturing equipment and defective products should add "depth and weight" to a House committee's investigation into the company's failure, Rep. Cory Gardner said Wednesday.

"It's information that will be used to not only defend the taxpayers of this country, but to really give answers to the hundreds of employees who lost their jobs in Northern Colorado," Gardner said in a phone interview.

Gardner, R-Yuma, and other members of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee have been investigating Abound Solar and the energy department's loan guarantee program.

The quarterly reports, obtained by the Northern Colorado Business Report from the U.S. Department of Energy, reveal a series of production problems and that the Loveland-based company's revenue and output levels came in lower than it had anticipated through much of 2011.

Abound's Chapter 7 bankruptcy in July resulted in the layoffs of 125 people, in addition to the 280 job cuts it made earlier in the year, and the closure of facilities in Larimer and Weld counties.

Abound, in media interviews and testimony before Congress, has