The Phoenix Sun

Who to Look For at the SOTU

When the camera moves across the gallery during tonight’s State of the Union, keep an eye out for two Arizona leaders in clean, renewable energy. Dr. Jeffery Britt, head of Tucson-based Global Solar will be there as a guest of Representative Gabriele Giffords (D-AZ). Donald Karner, the CEO of Phoenix’s own eTec, will be in the gallery, too, invited by First Lady Michelle Obama.

Global Solar

Thin-film solar cell

Britt’s company produces a variety of solar products, using the thin-film solar cells manufactured at its twin Tucson plants. One plant is powered by a 750 kW solar field.

“After working for many years in the solar energy industry,” Britt said earlier today.

“I am particularly interested to learn about the president’s proposals on renewable energy. Besides energy, there are so many critical national issues at stake now – health care, jobs, the economy – that make this a truly historic moment. I suspect that passion will be running high in the president and all the members of Congress. Television just cannot capture those feelings. I’m grateful to Congresswoman Giffords for giving me the opportunity to be present at this event.”

eTec

eTec charging stations

Donald Karner’s company should be familiar to Phoenix Sun readers. We’ve reported several times on eTec’s work designing, building and deploying new-generation battery chargers for electric vehicles.

eTec received nearly $100 million in stimulus funds to (I can’t help myself) jump-start the EV industry with charging stations being built in four states, primarily along highway corridors between major cities. eTec is installing several chargers along Interstate 10, for example, between Phoenix and Tucson.

It’s an exciting moment for clean, renewable energy in general and for solar power in particular. As the Senate drags its collective feet on passing a climate bill, companies like Global Solar and eTec are helping to reshape our economy, climate and even our way of life.

If you want to know the state of the Union, tune in tonight. When the camera is pointed at the gallery, you may get a good glimpse of the positive changes already underway here in Arizona — and throughout the Nation.

When George HW Bush promised to be the “environmental president,” few took the claim seriously. It was written off as campaign rhetoric, especially untrustworthy because it came from the vice president of the most anti-environmental administration since “the environment” was born as a social movement in the 1960s.

But after Bush won the White House in November 1988, he surprised nearly everyone with his choice to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Bush picked a bona fide environmentalist, the head of the World Wildlife Fund, William K. Reilly, a soft-spoken but sharp negotiator who was 49-years-old but looked at least a decade younger.

William Reilly in 1989

“We had a very good first two years,” Reilly says. But then came the preparations for the 1992 election, and the conservatives in the administration who had always seen Reilly (and all environmentalists) as a political liability, made sure that little was done to upset the “regulated community,” i.e, businesses that polluted and developers that destroyed whole ecosystems.

A low point came during the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, when Vice President Dan Quayle’s office sabotaged Reilly’s negotiations on a biodiversity treaty, which was supposed to be a showcase achievement of the summit.

Others, besides Quayle, were openly hostile to any environmental initiatives.

“Once, budget director Richard Darmin and I were standing outside of the Oval Office,” recalls Reilly, “and Darmin said in a loud voice, ‘The problem is we’ve got an environmentalist heading the EPA, and, worse, we have an environmentalist in there,’ and he pointed to the Oval Office.”

Life after EPA

Reilly returned to the WWF as the Bush administration headed into its last days in 1992. Since that time Reilly has continued working on environmental issues. In late 2006, Reilly and his wife Elizabeth decided to use solar energy to power a pump on their land in the heart of the Sonoma wine country, 70 miles north of San Francisco.

Pump array

As Reilly tells it, the project started out small and ended with the family “going all out.”

The array for the pump consists of four 65 watt Kyocera PV panels, and a tracking mechanism that keeps the panels aligned with the sun throughout the day.

Later, they added a passive solar heating system for their swimming pool. And, finally, the Reillys installed 36 solar panels on their barn. The panels are made by Sharp and each one is rated to produce 208 watts of electricity.

I asked Reilly what he paid on his most recent utility bill.

“For electricty,” he answered, “nothing.”

During the summer, the meter runs backwards as their solar generated excess capacity feeds back into the grid, powering other homes and earning credits for the Reillys on their future electric bills.

“We could have gotten entirely off the grid, if we had wanted,” says Reilly. “But, I didn’t want to do that. I like the idea of producing power and feeding it back into the system.” Every watt sent back onto the grid is one watt less that needs to be produced by a non-renewable and polluting source.

Now that solar power supplies all (or nearly all) his family’s electricity, Reilly is focused on future solar developments.

“I like the idea of producing power and feeding it back into the system.”

“Eventually,” he predicts, “it’s all going to be thin-film solar power.”

That’s one of three factors that Reilly believes need to fall into place for solar to take off in a massive way. Thin-film, because it’s cheaper to manufacture, easier to install and gathers diffused and scattered light far better than traditional silicon panels do.

Factor two: increased storage capacity. Unlike it’s fossil fuel rivals, solar panels only generate electricity when the sun is out — roughly half of each day. But progress is being made in battery storage of solar electricity, and also in storing the heat itself in large amounts of molten salt, heat that is used to boil water, turn a turbine and generate electricity.

Last, says Reilly, “the price of fossil fuels is going to play a large role” in making solar a more attractive option.

Of the three, it’s that last one that Reilly calls a sure thing.

“I do think all three factors are going to happen, though,” he says. “We’re going to get there, one way or another.”

Denise has been a solar energy consultant with SolarCity since well before the company became Arizona’s exclusive residential installer of thin-film solar panels made by First Solar (with headquarters in the Valley).

This summer she’ll mark her one year anniversary working for SolarCity.

The thin-film technology only became available for Valley homeowners this past October, which makes Denise an old-hand at this. Sort of.

According to First Solar’s website, the thin-film panels have a number of advantages over traditional semiconductor panels. Most important in our climate is their ability to maintain efficient power production at high temperatures.

Cost is a big factor, too. In February 2009, First Solar became the first company to build panels at a cost of under a dollar a watt.

Still, there are lots of factors to consider before choosing a company to design and deploy The Array. Cost is one. Performance and durability of the components are two more. Then there are the warranty issues, the company’s track record, whether or not your power company issues the top rebate for installs done by the company in question (or none at all for fly-by-night operations). [Question to ponder: How do even the sleaziest solar power installers fly by night?]

And, of course, the software.

“They are so proud of this software,” Denise said, pointing to the program running on her laptop. Proud and proprietary, apparently, because when Denise noticed that I had my Flip Mino running and pointing at the screen she was mortified and made me promise to erase any images that could allow competitors to copy SolarCity’s software baby: The SolarGuard® Solar Energy Monitoring System.

What does a solar panel manufacturer have to do with software, you ask? Everything. At least that’s how it looks judging by the resumes of the corporate honchos.

• Lyndon Rive — Founder & CEO, formerly the head of Everdream, a software and computer services company that was gobbled up by Dell.
• Peter Rive — Chief Operations Officer, was chief technology officer at Everdream.
• Elon Musk — Chairman, co-founder of Paypal, which was swallowed whole by eBay.

The software designed by SolarCity allows homeowners to monitor, in real time and over time, solar output from their units, total energy consumption, carbon footprint (in tons of CO2 not pumped into the atmosphere thanks to solar power) and even the percentage of cloud-cover. All this information is available online to customers 24/7 and accessed with normal password security.

Check out the sample location — COO Peter Rive’s home in San Francisco.

Although there are lots of straight-out practical benefits to using this software, its primary value is more subtle. I call it the McKibben Effect, named for environmentalist and nature writer Bill McKibben who pointed out the phenomenon in a 2003 essay about driving his Honda Insight.

McKibben realized that while driving he was constantly checking the dashboard display showing his mpg in real time.

“Does it sound like I pay inordinate attention to the gas gauge?” McKibben wrote.

Absolutely. And is it because I’m obsessed with global warming? Not really. True, that’s why I bought the car in the first place, paid the two grand extra it costs to get the hybrid engine. But if you thought about global warming all the time, you’d be nuts. When I’m behind the wheel, I’m an American—competitive, score-keeping, out to win. As I pull out of the driveway, what I think about is: can I beat my last trip?

I know exactly what McKibben means. I went goofy enough over my Kill A Watt; imagine the endless hours of fun that could be had monitoring, in real time, your total consumption of electricity, and how much of it you’re generating with the panels on your roof.

I’ll get to the actual bid soon. (Although it might be changing — a new incentive just kicked in).