PV Powered: Solar Flare
Manufacturing
Written by John Zorabedian   
Tuesday, 01 April 2008
PV Powered: Solar Flare - American Executive - RedCoat Publishing
This rapidly growing company is making solar power more reliable and efficient for commercial use.
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A unique funding mechanism that allows investors to accrue tax benefits for financing solar power installations is cutting the cost of solar power for end users. And as the environmental and economic costs of fossil fuel power continue to grow, solar power is getting a boost from government subsidies and research and development that are helping the industry become more efficient.

Gregg Patterson, CEO - PV Powered: Solar Flare - American Executive - RedCoat Publishing
Gregg Patterson, CEO
PV Powered, Inc., a manufacturer of inverters—the devices that convert DC power from solar panels to AC current that can be fed directly into the power grid—grew by triple digits last year, and CEO and Chairman Gregg Patterson expects the Bend, Ore.-based company will experience rapid growth for the foreseeable future. As the company ramps up production of inverters for commercial users capable of handling up to 500,000 kilowatts, Patterson said the company will eventually be able to go global with what he calls paradigm-changing advances to solar power’s viability.

Founded in 2003 to service the residential solar power market, PV Powered is currently partnering with Boeing, who is leveraging their Spectrolab subsidiary in developing solar power that is less costly and more reliable for utility-scale power generation. Working closely with Boeing to build an inverter for utility-scale applications has led to technology breakthroughs that will allow PV Powered to dramatically increase inverter reliability, Patterson said. “The promise of an inverter with a 20-plus-year operating life, higher uptime and more lifetime energy production is a remarkable value proposition for PV Powered’s commercial customers,” he said.

Traditionally, the cost of installing solar panels has not been cost-effective enough to attract more than those who supported the technology for its zero-emissions environmental benefits. In the past two years, however, tax incentives have created the space for innovative approaches to financing installations. Known as power purchase agreements, these funding mechanisms allow investors to take advantage of tax credits to install and operate the solar panels and sell power to the user at a reduced cost.

By using power purchase agreements, many large-scale users like Wal-mart, Safeway, Kohl’s, and others can power their buildings with solar panels without the huge investment up front. It’s a win-win situation for the investors and end users, Patterson said. “These investment companies are generally more comfortable with longer-term returns,” he said. “This is why companies like Wal-mart are able to rapidly adopt solar and use it as proof point to customers about their focus on green initiatives.”

Value proposition
Solar power is still a maturing and relatively expensive source of power, which is why PV Powered is focused on developing its technology to be more reliable and longer-lasting than its competitors. Tax breaks offered by the state of Oregon have helped nurture the industry in the state.

“The state of Oregon does a great job and has taken a leadership position to support solar power as an industry within the state as well as the deployment of renewable energy across the state,” Patterson said. “We’ve been working closely with the state as we do our product development and as we work with our customers here in Oregon to deploy solar.”

PV Powered’s inverter design uses one-third of the parts of other inverters. A Web-based monitoring system allows the company to measure performance in real time, and over time, the company has dramatically improved its reliability over other systems, Patterson said. “When we developed this inverter design, we wanted to tune it and refine it in the residential market,” he said. “We’ve got it to the point where it is rock solid technology, and we’re ready to scale that into the commercial and utility markets.”

The company is now able to bring to bear the expertise of the aeronautics manufacturer Boeing to further improve reliability and longevity of its products. “We have generated what is proving to be a radical and disruptive product offering for the commercial space,” Patterson said. “It takes the best insights of both companies to develop a product with a 20-plus-year life. That has huge implications for these commercial customers.”

By the end of the third quarter of this year, PV Powered hopes to begin manufacturing and shipping inverters capable of handling 250,000 kilowatts and 500,000 kilowatts of load. To do that, PV Powered is moving into a 100,000-square-foot manufacturing facility, and is preparing to grow rapidly to meet what is already a long backlog of orders.

Rapid growth
Patterson said his 22 years of experience at the inkjet division of Hewlett-Packard give him the necessary platform for rapidly expanding the manufacturing capabilities of PV Powered while continuing to focus on quality. He joined the company 15 months ago as its chairman and CEO to bring the company from a classic start-up phase into a maturing and scaling phase, he said.

“We’ve all dealt with dramatic growth in our past experience, and the elegant simplicity of our product gives us a manufacturing advantage in terms of scalability,” Patterson said. “What we’re doing is leveraging the expertise that I and the VP of manufacturing have at finding the best quality, lowest-cost suppliers in the world.”

The company is focused on implementing the lean manufacturing principles made famous by Toyota. And due to the long-term cost structure advantages of its product’s simpler design, Patterson said, PV Powered should be able to exploit growing demand all over the globe. “We view triple-digit growth as a stretch goal and something the US market alone will not support. As such we are going to be moving into worldwide markets in Europe and Asia where the markets are bigger and growing rapidly.”
 
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