Light saver | Rockland's Ascendant Energy flourishes thanks to renewed interest in solar energy
Chris Straka measures daylight in square feet. The CEO of Ascendant Energy in Rockland, Straka knows how much power a square foot of sunshine can produce, how much oil it can replace and how much money it can save.
Just a few years ago, gauging the sun this way relegated Straka to the realm of high-minded hippie. “People looked at solar as a novelty,” he says. “There was a lot of disinformation, and solar had to shed that image.”
But now that energy prices are skyrocketing, solar energy alternatives are grabbing the attention of more consumers and this five-year-old company is finally having its moment in the sun. Ascendant Energy sells and installs solar systems that heat water and air and provide electricity for the residential and commercial markets in Maine, Connecticut and Massachusetts. In June, Ascendant installed the largest solar hot water system in New England on the roof of Oakhurst Dairy’s processing facility and headquarters in Portland. The $200,000 Oakhurst project is Ascendant’s biggest in Maine, trailing on the heels of its biggest project to date, a solar electricity system installed at a Connecticut self-storage facility in January.
Ascendant’s research-and-development efforts have increased as well. In April, Ascendant installed the first beta system of its own technology, a cogenerator that produces electricity and hot water heat from the same unit, at The Chewonki Foundation, an environmental education center and summer camp in Wiscasset. Straka’s idea for this “Solar Heat and Power” system — a relatively new technology that has yet to be commercialized in the United States — was the impetus for the company’s founding in early 2003 and marks a major milestone for Ascendant. “There’s no product on the market like this,” Straka says.
High energy prices have given Ascendant a larger platform to stand on when pushing solar technology. Straka says he receives five to 10 inquiries about his products a day, as does Kurt Penney, the company’s vice president of sales and deliveries. Most of those calls are “out of the blue” inquiries from residential customers, Penney says, who are looking to offset oil costs. To handle the load, Ascendant doubled its staff from three to six employees over the past year.
These days, Ascendant Energy finds itself poised to jump into an upwardly mobile market. The number of solar-electric systems installed in the United States grew by 48% last year, thanks in large part to retailers like Wal-Mart and Best Buy adopting solar technology, according to Monique Hanis, director of communications at the Solar Energy Industries Association, a national trade organization based in Washington, D.C. Solar thermal heat installations more than doubled from 2005 to 2007, and, for the first time since the late 1980s, the United States is building solar power plants in the southwest in hopes of tapping some sunshine energy.
Still, even with this activity, the United States generates less than 1% of the energy it uses from solar power, Hanis says. This means there’s plenty of room to grow — and plenty of obstacles as well, including convincing people solar is a good investment. That skepticism is alive and well in Maine: At a recent New England Clean Energy Council roundtable in Cambridge, Mass., Straka says, some participants questions whether Maine’s northern latitude left it at a disadvantage when it comes to using solar power. “People think solar doesn’t work in Maine,” he says.
Solar startup
Straka lived in Massachusetts for 25 years and worked in the IT industry for 17 years for big-name companies like Sun Microsystems and Ernst & Young. Looking for a new career path and a better place to raise his children, he moved to Owls Head in 2003 and began exploring the burgeoning industry of solar technology. He launched his company later that year, inspired by NASA’s Helios Prototype, a 247-foot solar-electric-powered flying wing developed in 1999.
Designing a solar technology system is a lot like designing computer systems — “It’s all input, transform, and output,” Straka says — and Staka took classes on energy and environmental policy at Tufts University to round out his knowledge. “I was basically reinventing myself, career-wise,” he says. “And I was doing it in Maine, where there wasn’t an established solar industry, and I was pioneering in a place where there were not a lot of support systems.”
Straka found his support through the Portland-based E2Tech Council, the Maine Center for Enterprise Development and the Maine Technology Institute. Ascendant Energy received three seed grants totaling $24,920 from MTI from 2003 to 2005, and in 2006 received a development award of $324,300 to develop the prototype of its cogenerator. The company moved to its current location on Main Street in Rockland in 2006. Ascendant also rents space for fabrication work in the nearby Rockland Industrial Park.
For much of its first two years, Ascendant focused solely on R&D and developing the cogenerator technology. But by late 2004, the company jumped on the chance to sell and install solar power systems manufactured by companies like Alternate Energy Technologies, Schüco and Sanyo as a way to generate some income. “I basically needed to keep the ship afloat,” Straka says.
Its first installations happened on the island of Vinalhaven as part of local efforts there to wean the island off the mainland’s electricity. (For more on Ascendant’s milestone projects, see “Bright spots”.)
Straka says the company has installed about 70 solar energy systems to date. And though he won’t give specifics, Straka says the company is profitable and its annual revenues are less than $5 million.
These days, Straka says the installation projects are helping sell the company — and the concept of solar power. The June installation of 75 solar panels on the roof of Oakhurst Dairy — the panels are used to heat the water used to rinse milk cases — is a strong endorsement of the viability of solar power, Straka says. “It’s gotten visibility for us, and it’s sent the message that it’s okay to consider solar,” he says. “Doing it at an industrial processing plant, that’s about as mainstream as it gets.”
The company also is looking at other areas to expand. In April, Ascendant started a pilot program with MaineHousing (formerly Maine State Housing Authority) that will offer multi-family and elderly property owners long-term financing to help pay for solar energy systems. The company has contacted seven property owners from Sanford to Bangor, and all are interested in taking part. “Solar is a young space, so we’re trying to eliminate as many barriers as we can,” Straka says.
The next phase
As Ascendant Energy continues to push its sales and installations business, the company also is finally seeing its own creation move closer to the mainstream. The heat and electricity cogenerator, called Solar Heat and Power, combines solar thermal technology that produces heat with photovoltaic solar cells that generate electricity. The cogenerator harnesses heat from the PV system that normally dissipates and uses it to heat water. The combined system takes up less space than separate units for electricity and hot water, increases the electricity output of the photovoltaic cells from 14% to 37%, and at about $15,000 for a residential unit, costs less than buying separate systems, Straka says.
Combining thermal and PV technology isn’t new, and there are products like Straka’s available in Europe, says Tim Merrigan, engineer and senior project manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo. But in the United States, there are only a few such projects under development, most in their early stages, including one the NREL is working on. “It’s a promising field, because it has the potential to bring down solar electricity costs, and it’s one of the best technologies to do that,” Merrigan says.
The cost of solar technology and the lack of major incentives, however, are preventing solar from being widely adopted, say some industry experts. Solar, for example, is not expected to be priced on par with traditional energy sources until 2015, according to study released this month by Portland, Ore.-based research firm Clean Edge and Co-op America, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C.
And though solar is getting more attention, Straka says he still has to convince people, especially residential customers, of its long-term financial benefits. A solar thermal unit for a residence starts at about $10,000 and lasts 25 years, and Straka says that a loan to buy the unit costs less than the price of oil in that time span. “But a lot of people aren’t ready to put $10,000 down,” he says. “With higher energy prices, a lot of people are looking for that silver bullet with not a lot of upfront cost.”
Consumer wariness has led Ascendant Energy to develop a new line of thermal technology for hot air that starts at $3,000 — a “price point that’s more in line with people’s expectations for energy systems,” Straka says.
Also dampening the solar energy boom is a dearth of public funds and incentives. The federal tax credit for solar energy technology — a 30% commercial and residential credit — is set to expire this December, and a bill calling for its renewal for another eight years has been filibustered in the Senate.
Maine has offered $500,000 a year in rebates for residential and commercial solar installations since 2005, but the popularity of the first-come first-served program this year outstripped the fund and led to a suspension of the program until 2009, according to Dick Fortier, solar program manager at Efficiency Maine, which runs the rebate program.
Ascendant last year expanded into the Massachusetts and Connecticut markets because stronger rebate programs have made them “lucrative,” Straka says.
Straka himself has been working to build his own company’s capital. So far, the majority of the company’s money has come from sales and long-term debt. Now that the company has cleared the start-up phase, Straka says he’s looking to attract investors and equity capital. “We’ve hit major milestones, we’ve eliminated risk, so we’re looking for a fairly fast turnaround period for this equity round,” he says.
Despite the challenges to developing the solar market in Maine and elsewhere, Straka and industry experts expect it to continue to grow — which could make competition stiffer. There are 150 certified solar technology dealers, distributors and installers in Maine, and that number will grow to 350 this year, says Fortier. Straka says he “rarely” finds himself competing with another company or installer on project bids, but he expects it to happen soon. “How to design and install solar equipment is still a specialty knowledge — there’s still a premium associated with it,” he says. “But it’s the type of knowledge that will begin to become a commodity.”
Mindy Favreau, Mainebiz staff reporter, can be reached at mfavreau@mainebiz.biz.
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