For a Devotee of Solar Energy, a Shot at Earning Respect
TACOMA, Wash. - The sun was shining for a change, which was good news for Richard Thompson, known throughout these parts as Solar Richard. 
“Pennies from heaven,” Mr. Thompson said as his electric meter spun round - in reverse.
Not that a shining sun is required for the meter to spin backward. An overcast sky does the job. The meter just spins a bit more slowly.
That would be the meter attached to Mr. Thompson’s house, painted sunshine yellow with a large solar panel out front next to the bedraggled remains of giant sunflowers - “organic solar trackers,” he calls them.
In the driveway sits Mr. Thompson’s ancient diesel-powered Volkswagen, with “Electricity From the Sun, Duh” emblazoned on one side. A solar-powered motor scooter sits next to two decrepit phone booths that are reminders of his past.
Not that many years ago, Solar Richard was simply Richard Thompson, a working stiff trying to make a buck. But since he began powering his home completely with solar power in 2001, he has been transformed into a certified character in this port city just south of Seattle. He is recognized on the street. He gives talks on solar energy to grade schools, and last February he traveled to Nigeria to address a conference on solar matters. His message is always the same: solar energy will save the planet, but the planet needs to get going.
“We could take out all the dams because we wouldn’t need them,” he said. “We could take out the nuclear plants and the coal-burning plants.”
At Mr. Thompson’s urging, the new mile-long Tacoma Narrows Bridge is on its way to being lighted with solar power, a project toward which the state has contributed $1.5 million. And if all goes as planned, there will be electricity left over to feed back into the city’s power supply.
Then, Mr. Thompson said, maybe he will get some respect. Maybe people will stop asking for free advice, like how many panels it would take to heat their house, and instead pay for his expertise. Maybe he will not have to eke out a living powering strawberry festivals and beer fest bands.
After all, he is not getting any younger, having, he said, passed the 60 mark a few years back. “If these are the golden years,” he said, “oh, man.”
As the bridge was being built, construction workers put up electric work lights, then added to their handiwork with multiple colors for the holidays and blue for the Seattle Seahawks’ trip to the Super Bowl last year.
The idea of lights on the bridge took hold in Tacoma, which led to a meeting of well-heeled activists. Mr. Thompson showed up. And while he was widely known in solar circles by then, he was not exactly a household name in Tacoma, solar panels in his front yard notwithstanding.
“I didn’t have a clue” who he was, said Desa Gese Conniff, a lawyer who has become the group’s spokeswoman. “But once he started opening his mouth, you found out the passion he has for green sources of energy.”
Since then, the scope of the bridge lighting project has expanded, including the idea of generating enough excess solar power to contribute to a requirement that 10 percent of the energy produced in the state be green.
“I get to build something that will put Tacoma on the map,” Mr. Thompson said.
His father was in the Air Force, he said, so he grew up with a somewhat itinerant life. He spent some time in college in Florida, tried his hand at installing solar-heated pools, moved to Tacoma two decades ago and for years made his living installing and collecting money from pay telephones, a business that failed.
“It was fun until the advent of cellphones,” Mr. Thompson said. “Now I’ve got pay phones in the garage. I’ve got them in the basement and the attic.”
But he never lost his fascination with the power of the sun, and in 2001 he succeeded in running his small three-bedroom Craftsman-style home on solar energy, using the huge panel he plopped down in the front yard.
He has traded small solar systems to Brazilian missionaries in need of a dependable power source, getting plenty of good coffee in return. And to make a little money, he began selling low-voltage Christmas lights and providing electricity for events using solar batteries.
His work brought him to the attention of David Gilmour, a retired professor at the University of Puget Sound who was planning to build a home in Idaho.
With some trepidation, Mr. Gilmour said, he hired Mr. Thompson to equip the house for solar energy. After spending $70,000 for parts and labor, Mr. Gilmour’s home also has reverse meter readings, along with plenty of hot water and a heated floor.
“It works very well,” he said, adding that he had learned Mr. Thompson’s strengths and weaknesses, including a generous nature, a short fuse and terrible business acumen.
“He’s an old hippie,” Mr. Gilmour said. “He’s irascible and can get angry quickly at people’s lack of information.
“It’s because of so many years of frustration,” he added. “But he’s only concerned about the world finally getting savvy.”
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
Congratulations to Mr. Thompson! It really is possible to do these things on a local, personal level. For you who think it’s beyond your abilities or too expensive, here are three sites that could change your minds. I list the best one first, but they’re all useful.
http://www.homepower.com
http://www.diesel-bike.com
http://www.communityenergyservices.org
The man at diesel-bike has converted his home entirely by using junk he has found at the local landfill and other common (and usually free) materials. He’s off-grid and sells power back to the grid. This is in upstate NY near the Canadian border where the winters are - well, wintry (to say the least).
The future! The only we will survive our disastrous paths. Forget bio-diesel, ethanol and every other over processed / transported form of fuel. If we would all dedicate ourselves to this technology - we’d all have pennies from heaven.
The more solar is demonized as in-efficient, complicated or low output - THE BETTER. Keep the corporate f$$$s away from the profits. Solar has the potential to uplift the lower and middle class people to a sustainable / self-sufficient lifestyle. Take your homes off the grid today.
Oh yea - couple this with carbon sequestering and you have the true answer to global warming.
Damn it people, did you notice his initial capital outlay?
$70,000 for a unit that has batteries that lots of pollution was created to build, batteries that are probably guaranteed to last 8 years and then the lead to be reprocessed or off to the land fill, o yeah, those replacement batteries are going to cost an arm and a leg. I know, solar sounds so green and all that free sun out there but for most people, especially in the North West it makes no cents. Conservation is the best answer at this point in technological time.
I posted a similar message as the one above a couple of days ago and a response was: “We don’t need any batteries as we are plugged into the grid” , Wait a minute, I thought solar was supposed to get one off the grid? If you pay $70,000 upfront and still rely on the grid, hmmmmm!
I will admit that Richard Thompson is probably off the grid or uses kerosene lanterns at night but just to get juice during the daylight hours seems a little spartan to me. Maybe the average CDer can and would cut back their lifestyle but the average American will pay for every last barrel of oil to be sucked from the earth to maintain lifestyle and then embrace the nuclear option with open arms.
Ethanol is solar fuel.
Done right, it won’t add pollution. In fact, it will subtract CO2 and reverse the greenhouse effect.
Learn how to do it right, do it yourselfers
permaculture.com
BarnBurner, the eventual goal of using the grid is that eventually, with enough small generating sources, the big centralized plants become obsolete. The distributed small sources make the grid more stable since one big plant going down takes out a lot of service, where a few small suppliers dropping off are un-noticed. Since peak demand is during the day, multi-point solar gives a high build efficiency.
Yes. And Monty Burns will blot out the sun!
Excellent article about the most abundant energy source in our solar system - the Sun. 99.5% of the Milky Way’s mass. However, if you want solar, you don’t have to spend $70,000 to get solar panels for your house. You can rent the units and pay the equivalent of what you’re paying for electricity today. Check it out:
www.jointhesolution.com/solarchoices
November 5th at 10PM CST “Living with Ed” on HGTV will air a segment about solar energy.
Why does solar have to prove it can be perfect? Are we comparing it to perfection? No, we’re comparing it to the system of energy production that is killing us all and totally controlling our body politic, so the bar is pretty low.
The goal does not have to be getting rid of the grid. A much better goal is getting rid of the profit motive in energy distribution. Notice I did not say in production - in production what is required is a re-ordering of regulatory priorities; production has always been regulated, it’s a question of who the regulation supports and what its goals are. Cities and states should take over the grid management (as has been done in cities including Sacramento, which by the way escaped the blackouts and extortions of Enron). Let there be competition and enterprise in producing energy to the cleanest standard currently possible. This will be solar and wind, gradually supplementing, then replacing fossil fuel.
Those who say it is impossible, expensive, impractical simply are either shilling for the energy companies, or misinformed by them. Solar works now. It would require subsidy at first for homeowners and landlords to install the hardware.
The whole issue of subsidy has been utterly warped by energy company PR. May I ask what everyone thinks roads are? They are, obviously, a gigantic government subsidy program to support the auto and oil businesses, making rail “impractical” for freight. And does no one realize that the oil, coal and natural gas industries are massively subsidized by the government, making solar and wind “impractical”?
The technical solutions for our dilemma are available. There may be no avoiding significant damage for decades to come, even if we make a big turnaround now (which of course we are unlikely to do). But there are no excuses, only political inertia and deception, preventing better, cleaner energy.
Now what about people living in apartments and condos? They won’t be able to use solar for electricity unless anyone wants to prove otherwise. The author only refers to homeowners much as I like his ways.
“I know, solar sounds so green and all that free sun out there but for most people, especially in the North West it makes no cents.” - Barnburner
Wrong. Not trying to be confrontational here but it does make sense. You don’t need full on bluebird sunny days to generate enough electricity with solar power for the average household. Yes you will need conservation, but conservation without alternative power supply will achieve nothing.
If you really want to understand how to make this happen I recommend visiting The Solar Living Institute.
“Ethanol is solar fuel. Done right, it won’t add pollution. In fact, it will subtract CO2 and reverse the greenhouse effect.”
Wrong again. It’s an in-efficient method compared to Solar Power. “Plant, harvest, process, ship, burn, re-cycle waste” Old school lines of thought and energy generation.
Wrong yourself, Daniel. It’s photosynthesis, mycorhyzzal fungi and local production of fuel, without being controlled by a corporation. Be allergic to waste, use everything you have.
Solar power is fine, if you don’t mind needing cadmium and such to produce it.
You don’t need petroleum based fertilizer, herbicide, pesticide or anything like that to do ethanol right on a local scale. And no it’s not about providing unlimited fuels for SUV drivers. It’s about MAKING IT YOURSELF, without reliance on a corporation or foreign power. Anyone in any part of the world has something they can make the fuel from. Not the corporate industrial model of ethanol we have today. Local fuel from local crops, from deserts, from water, etc.
Check out the website above. Read the book. Get back to me.
As I understand ethanol it increases octane in gas so can gas be replaced with ethanol? How does one heat their home with ethanol? At this time corn prices have gone through the roof because the production of ethanol has competed for corn that was being used in foods. The price of tacos has tripled here in Mexico in the last year or so. The stock of ethanol producers in the States has plummeted as their need for corn has forced the prices up making ethanol production much more expensive.
Of course ethanol could be made cheaply and probably more efficiently from sugar but the U.S. is not talking to some of the hemisphere’s sugar producers. Cuba is a sugar producer but Brazil is a major sugar producer and as I recall GW is in a snit because Brazil told the big Pharms. where to stick their patents and made their own generic AIDs drugs-well, shame on them to try and avoid huge drug mark-up to aid the poor inflicted with AIDs. We will teach them a lesson, we wont buy their cheap and plentiful sugar.
BarnBurner and good2go:
First off, BarnBurner: Did you actually read the article? Mr. Thompson does NOT use batteries and no where in the article does it say he does. He is connected to the power grid and during the day sunshine makes his meter run backwards thus “banking” kilowatt hours for him to use at night or during the day if he uses more energy (unlikely) than his photovoltaic (PV) system produces at that given time. It’s called net metering and about 40 states have it. I’ve been selling PV systems in Southern California since ‘02 and have have 0 complaints from the owners of the dozens I’ve sold–none of which requires batteries.
Next, solar naysayers like pointing to cadmium’s use in solar panels when it’s actually used in a very small amount of modules produced. It is a heavy metal of the zinc group and I believe it should not be used. About 95% of PV cells are straight silicon (of various purities) and the rest are amorphous silicon comprised of numerous inert coumpounds.
Ethanol works for countries with plenty of land. Brazil recently became energy independent largely by decimating its rainforests to grow huge crops of sugarcane for ethanol (and eucalyptus trees for cheap toilet paper to the US!). Ethanol is not so good for countries in Europe which need their land for growing food or livestock. Instead of being dependent on the Middle East for oil as now, they would depend on Brazil or similar countries for ethanol.
As for solar not working in the Northwest, ask the Germans or Japanese if solar works for them. These countries are even or farther north in latitude than Oregon or Washington.
Solar power must drive the major utilities nuts because it can be produced right where it’s used; on the roof for the family–or business–below. No coal or natural gas burning. No nuclear hazards or waste. No new dams. No new transmission and distribution lines. No rising electricity costs for those who use solar power.
lobo72
Can you recomend any makers of photovoltaic cells? What would be a good source for buying them? Any German products that you could recomend?
Colleen
The California Energy Commission does a good job of reviewing/testing all the major modules produced and in order to qualify for the state’s solar rebate, modules installed must be on this list. It includes Siemens, Schuco and RWE/Schott from Germany; Sharp, Kyocera and Sanyo from Japan; Suntech from China; US-made Uni-Solar (amorphous silicon) and many others. The link is:
http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/cgi-bin/eligible_pvmodules.cgi
For off-grid application, go to www.dcpower-systems.com or www.discoverpower.com.
If you are planning to connect to the power grid, I suggest you get quotes from qualified installers in your area. Go to find www.verdeenergy.com or findsolar.com. I work only with large-scale photovoltaic systems at this time but if you’re in the San Diego area you can contact me through my blog at solaratwork.blogspot.com and I can recommend a few of my associates in residential sales.
I’m in Ontario in Canada on the Niagara peninsula hoping to put up a new commercial building (2000 square feet) and I want to make it green
Thank you for the advice. Its very much appreciated.