AltEnToday

This is part 3 of a 3 part series. If you’re joining a little late, I welcome you to read part 1 and part 2.

Conference Session: Finding Talent and Managing Growth
Brad Collins, Jay Paidpati, Barry Cinnamon, Jeff Melby, Dan Shugar
This session set several fast-growing company CEO’s together to discuss the challenges of building a company in this sort of industry.

I had the chance to meet and work with Brad Collins, the director of ASES (American Solar Energy Society) before, so I was looking forward to this session all day. It didn’t disappoint, with a lively discussion and a good range of viewpoints. Some noteworthy statistics came up. For one, the total market for renewable and energy efficiencies exceeded $1 Trillion dollars in 2007, and is projected to grow rapidly. Within the context of solar alone, Jay Paidpati provided some interesting work from a report his firm had compiled. Their mean forecast stated that the industry will experience approximately 40% growth for the next 10-15 years, and between 2006 and 2016 is projected to be 26 times larger. This means transitioning from a 14,000 person workforce in 2006 to 100k+ workers in 2016.

Jeff Melvi provided some insights in to the process of running a business from the start, including many personal thoughts on the purpose of leadership and management and some of the philosophies of building a great team. He presented a roadmap of managing new technologies: Present state -> Vision of the Future -> Sustainable value relationship -> Technology management & refinement -> Strategic thrust. He also pointed out that technology is in no way a replacement for people, but rather should always be treated as another tool to help build the core competencies of the firm. Long term perspective with short-term emphasis on excellence will yield the best results, and the described his firm as “a dynamic, adaptive enterprise.” Dan Shugar, CEO of San Jose based SunPower (perhaps the largest market-cap pure-solar firm in the world) provided an enthusiasm for his chosen field, and described the history of the firm in detail (since he’s been there since it’s origination 20+ years previously). He described the transition from garage tinkerers to a multi-billion dollar multinational as a process filled with pitfalls and opportunities, and admitted luck was on their side more than once over the company’s history. He also outlined his thoughts on corporate culture in this industry by summarizing: Mission, innovation, opening to the “best ideas” no matter where they came from, access to executives by all levels of employee, and developing a bad-news-now attitude where no issue should be overlooked. Furthermore, he stressed the importance of building a company culture around “winning,” and pointing out that wins, no matter how small or seemingly trivial, always are a good thing for morale and reinforcement in the company’s purpose.

Conference Session: Closing Plenary
Isao Yukawa, Rick Andreen, Maria Cantwell
This final session provided the closing remarks on the conference.

This session was brief but featured two of the most notable speakers of the conference, the CEO of Sharp Power (the world’s largest solar panel manufacturer) and Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell from Washington State. Mr. Yukawa set the tone by describing the act of building new solar power power facilities akin to creating brand new, clean oil fields across the globe. He proposed a future where we reduce our dependence on foreign oil to pre-industrial levels, and summarized his vision succinctly: “The sun ultimately fuels human beings.”

Maria Cantwell was the final speaker of the session, and she was awarded the Solar Industry Person of the Year Award by the Solar Electric Industry Association for her work on the passage of the $25 billion Cantwell-Enson Amendment to the recent financial rescue package in the senate. She described the biggest challenges and opportunities ahead, including upgrading the nation’s power grid, implementing solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal where possible as quickly as possible, and beginning to shift our transportation infrastructure towards electric vehicles and better mass-transit solutions. She finished by pointing out that the biggest task the government must undertake is to support renewable energy through identifying where federal land can be allocated to clean energy projects, much like the oil industry has done over the 20th century.

Other notes and thoughts about the show

Beyond those speaking sessions, I took a substantial amount of time wandering the exhibit hall and meeting as many professionals as I could. Of course, the focus of my efforts was to reach recruiters or hiring managers within those companies, but I was also pleased to have several discussions about the industry and its future. Overwhelmingly the mood was optimistic, especially thanks to the passage of the ITC (Investment Tax Credit) which for some companies will offset as much as 30% of a solar power system installation through federal subsidies. Solar cell and module production is being revolutionized and streamlined, and cost efficiencies in production, distribution, financing, and long-term support abound.

Overall, this was a GREAT show, and students should definitely take advantage of the preferable student pricing when it comes around in San Jose in 2009. Stay tuned, as always to AltEnToday.com for more coverage of solar events and news as it happens!