INTRODUCTORY SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY ... - PHOTON Info

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Under the Sun made to uniquely fit each new satellite, a process that required training new workers with every order. »We suggested that they standardize solar cells and we would make them continuously and have them in inventory,« he says. »But they wouldn’t buy that.« Lesson three: No gets you nowhere 22 If one still relevant guiding principle from the early days of PV is to be skepti- cal of too much hype, another is that when most people see dim prospects of success there are always a few who see opportunity. Such was the case with two scientists, Peter Varadi and Joseph Lindmayer, who were working in the early 1970s at COMSAT, the Communi- cation Satellite Corp.’s research lab. COMSAT was one of the few businesses involved in developing PV for space and both Lindmayer and Varadi earned a good living improving solar cells and managing the company’s phys- ics and chemistry labs, respectively. Things were running smoothly enough at COMSAT, so Varadi and Lindmayer, maybe a little bored, figured it was time to do something new. As 1972 came to a close, Varadi, a Hungarian native who escaped the country before the Soviets invaded in 1956, suggested to COMSAT managers, a bunch of retired Air Force generals, that the lab should investigate ways to utilize PV on earth. Nothing doing, the generals told Vara- di and Lindmayer. Rather than settle back into their cushy jobs, the duo, fortified by Lindmayer still moved ahead with their plans. Or at least they tried. Convinced that their idea to bring down the cost of PV and make it suitable for so-called terrestrial applications was patently bril- liant, Varadi says he figured all they had to do was send their business plan to venture capitalists and the money would start flooding in. Twenty presentations later, Solarex remained penniless. »If we were very successful, they learned how to spell photovoltaic,« says Varadi, who attributes their failure to raise much money to their complete lack of business experience and the fact that the venture capitalists had never even heard of PV. Still undeterred, Varadi and Lind- mayer managed to scrounge enough money from friends and relatives, un- derstanding that it meant they would have to make Solarex a viable business quickly. And they did, turning a profit in just eight months, while also validat- ing their hunch that, yes, PV did, in fact, have a place on earth. And just who on earth was buying the PV that Solarex was making? There were small markets, Varadi says, which were at- tracted to solar for its economics, strange as that may sound to an industry whose perpetual bugaboo has been cost. For So- larex, those earliest commercial markets were not of the grid-tied commercial, residential and utility type so focused on these days: customers were businesses and institutions that saw in PV a cheaper, more reliable alternative to batteries. Meeting the telecommunication »A g u y fr o m l.A. c A m e up in A po r s c h e wi t h pV in th e bA c k«: th At’s ho w Jo h n schAeffer, seen he r e, t h e fo u n d e r of re A l go o d s, A n o r t h e r n cAliforniA instAller, f i r s t be g A n selling mo d u l e s to of f-gr i d us e r s bA c k in th e 1970s. to d A y, 95 percent of hi s business is a few glasses of champagne, decided on New Year’s Eve in 1973 to take a stab at bringing PV down to earth. »We decided that to hell with the generals, we were go- ing to do it ourselves,« Varadi said. Still at the party, they settled on a name for their still fictitious company: Solarex. Even after the euphoria of the New Year’s celebration wore off, Varadi and s o l A r, m o s t of it gr i d-tied needs of government institutions like the United States Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management and police departments brought in a lot of initial business, Varadi says. »They were the first serious customers we went after,« he says. »For police in Arizona, they could get no communications from repeater stations in the mountains so they put in solar.« Lights on navigational buoys also needed power and it was a lot cheaper to use PV – even at $20 per watt -than it was to outfit a boat to go swap out a non- rechargable battery every time it died, which could add up to a bill of around $6,000. Varadi, who outfitted buoys in the Suez Canal with PV systems in the mid-1970s, also found willing custom- November 2009
ers in telecommunications companies, who needed equipment in remote areas to function with as little hands-on main- tenance as possible. Lesson four: Your enemies may be your friends It has been axiomatic in the PV industry that when oil prices rise, interest in solar goes up; as prices fall, so too does enthusiasm for solar. But oil and PV have had a more direct relationship than that for a long time. After the space program was ratcheted back in the 1970s, in fact, big oil companies became one of the main customers for the few PV companies around. Bill Yerkes knows this from experience. Like Varadi, Yerkes is one of the pioneers of the American PV industry, who also got his start in PV via the space program when he worked at Spectrolab, another sup- November 2009 23 » plier of panels for satellites and rockets. After Spectrolab was sold in 1975, Ye- rkes was ousted as president of the company, giving him one of those rare op- portunities to redirect his life. »I was out of a job and I decided I knew a lot about solar panels and had a lot of ideas about how to do it,« he says. Yerkes leased a 4,000 square foot garage in Chatsworth, California, bought some wafers, built his very own laminator and started trying Rolf Schulten / photon-pictures.com
Page 1: A LONG, STRANGE TRIP SOUTHERN EXPOS
Page 4 and 5: 4 Under the Sun National Renewable
Page 6 and 7: 6 Photo of the month The garden of
Page 8 and 9: May we introduce ourselves? The PHO
Page 10 and 11: 10 Readers‘ letters PHOTON, welco
Page 12 and 13: 12 Readers‘ letters So why are so
Page 14 and 15: 14 Under the Sun History A long, No
Page 16 and 17: 16 Under the Sun The headquarters o
Page 18 and 19: Under the Sun selling book, »A Gui
Page 20 and 21: Under the Sun Academy of Sciences,
Page 24 and 25: Under the Sun to figure out how to
Page 26 and 27: Under the Sun heaters and books to
Page 28 and 29: 28 The 13 Solar Colonies PHOTON inv
Page 30 and 31: Politics to federal income tax. Als
Page 32 and 33: State 32 Politics invest. If histor
Page 34 and 35: 34 Politics San Francisco From mega
Page 36 and 37: 36 Politics (see table below). Acco
Page 38 and 39: Politics cent of permits are over-t
Page 40 and 41: 40 Politics Stimulus package Feel t
Page 42 and 43: 42 Politics guide companies interes
Page 44 and 45: Politics »There was a lot of hoopl
Page 46 and 47: Solyndra, Inc. (2) 46 Business Seri
Page 48 and 49: 48 Business DOE in the spotlight So
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Page 54 and 55: 54 Business Buying programs Solar b
Page 56 and 57: Business run three campaigns a year
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Science & Technology Filling a nich
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Anne Kreutzmann / photon-pictures.c
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76 Science & Technology Exeltech’
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Architecture Belgium Returning to e
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80 Architecture November 2009
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82 Architecture November 2009
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84 In Practice Proposals The perfec
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86 In Practice Is your proposal com
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88 In Practice that are predictable
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90 In Practice System: accomplished
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In Practice bluntly: »We have this
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Elkus’ golden trout pond is the l
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Test Laboratory A couple of years a
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Events From system inspection to in
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November 19-20, 2009 Alternative En
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Who should exhibit? • Manufacture
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Education & Training Producer-indep
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Internships New internships in the
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Ask the Editors Whether it’s abou
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Industry Registry Here is informati
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Preview The issue 12-2009 appears a
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