Closing the Circle
One of the most satisfying aspects of my work is the ability to dive deeply into new areas of interest, which avoids silos that occur in other careers. This broad exposure keeps my work more interesting and enables me to provide greater value to our clients by proposing approaches garnered from other — sometimes unrelated — corners of the industry.
I began more than 25 years ago with incredible opportunities to build new business models in distributed solar a decade before those markets began to explode. At the time, my colleagues and I pioneered some of the first solar leases and renewable energy credit trades in the US. These early experiences propelled further work, some of which I’m happy to say continues to this day.
Today, my team’s work is broadly diversified and encompasses gas and electric utilities; residential and commercial customers; low-income and market-rate projects; and program planning, implementation and evaluation. The range of technologies within our portfolio is broader, too, ranging from home weatherization to new building construction, and electric vehicles to load management. The largest component of our work involves delivering energy improvements to low-income customers.
My introduction to the ecosystem of programs that serve low-income communities got me thinking about solar in new ways. Under the right circumstances, rooftop solar can be competitive with other energy efficiency measures that have been funded for years via traditional mechanisms. If true, solar has great potential to reduce energy cost burdens within communities most in need and revive the moribund web of programs aimed at achieving these goals.
I recently helped pull together a dream team comprised of Frontier and key colleagues within the non-profit and utility sectors to identify and field-test these ideas. Our proposal, “New Pathways for Residential Rooftop Solar in Texas,” was selected for award by the National Renewable Energy Laboratories. During the next 18 months, our team will identify, refine, demonstrate, and evaluate strategies that widen access to residential rooftop solar among underserved communities.
While we are just beginning this project, I see it as the closing of a circle that began a quarter century ago. My career started with a new technology that was almost entirely limited to the wealthy. Now solar is becoming a viable option for nearly everyone.
Originally written by Steve Wiese, Frontier Energy — https://frontierenergy.com/blog/#closing-the-circle
