How can S.T.A.R. Labs afford to keep the lights on?

Question

IIRC in the first episode of The Flash TV show, Dr. Wells mentions that after the explosion he has become something of a pariah, and that S.T.A.R. Labs has lost most or all of its backers.

If this is the case how can they afford to keep the facility running?

It's possible that they can generate their own power, but that doesn't explain how they have the budget for new developments such as the superspeed treadmill.

None of the three remaining S.T.A.R. Labs scientists appear to have other jobs. So where is the money coming from?

Answer 1

Well in the Arrow-verse the Wells built Star Labs 15 years before the Flash got his powers. During those 15 years Wells has become pretty rich considering the fact it was one of the largest labs. It probably added many millions of dollars to his wealth. In addition he knew that he was going to go home(to the future) so he could use up nearly all of his wealth because money would be insignificant in the future. He didn't care about spending money because returning to the future was all he cared about. So in conclusion he already had many millions of dollars from his 15 years of various research and he could have spent as much as he needed to go back to the future.

Answer 2

It's a fair bet that when he took over Dr. Wells's identity he took the money that Dr. Wells had available and made some high risk investments, being from the future he knew how they would play out, put the earnings into a trust and continued making investments to the point where the trust kept generating revenue to keep everything going.