The Johnny Appleseed of solar?
For Jeffrey Mayer, the dawn of Soluxe Solar arrived with the departure of a New Hampshire company from his Westport house, following the installation of photovoltaic panels ”“ but with the system not connected to the grid and dozens of building code violations for which Mayer had to call in a Connecticut company to fix.
Now it is Mayer”™s Darien-based Soluxe that is looking to establish a national platform for the sale and installation of residential solar panels, as well as for small commercial systems.
Mayer is one year removed from the sale of Stamford-based MXenergy, which sold electricity and natural gas in 16 states. Constellation acquired MXenergy last summer and last month jettisoned the MXenergy name.
Mayer says he did not envision running his own solar company before the snafu at his own home.
“Did I have it in my mind? I can”™t say I did,” Mayer said. “I looked at the solar business for years and had hoped to put MX into it, but we decided to stay focused on the retail energy sector.”
MXenergy regularly touted its environmental efforts ”“ for instance planting “carbon offset” forests in Georgia and Montana, creating an online “cable channel” that tackled environmental topics and backing a Fairfield man”™s efforts to convert an old Toyota to battery power.
“I guess it was an epiphany when I realized we were in the tobacco business, and that just as 30 years ago if you were in the tobacco business nobody thought twice about it, today they say, ”˜What were you thinking?”™” Mayer said.
“I want to be the Johnny Appleseed of solar,” Mayer added. “I want solar sprinkled on every rooftop that can take it.”
Mayer likens the emerging industry for solar products and services to a developing frontier and even Wild West, not unlike the markets that developed in the deregulations of the energy and telecommunications industries in the past few decades.
Still, he thinks Soluxe faces an easier sell than MXenergy, which was among the early companies attempting to wean consumers off the habit of paying utilities for their electricity.
“And yet we managed to pull (in) the business,” Mayer said. “In our minds the key to solar is communication. If customers understand the benefits, they will buy solar.”
Only in June, General Electric Co. suspended plans to build a solar manufacturing plant in Colorado, and Abound Solar there filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors, prompting a statement from the Solar Energy Industries Association that some 5,600 companies remain that SEIA calls “strong.”
New Jersey and California led the nation in photovoltaic installations in the first quarter, SEIA reported last month, despite sharp drops from a year earlier as incentive programs run dry. Among other Northeast states, Massachusetts ranked fourth, New York 10th, Vermont 18th and Connecticut 22nd.
Despite the drops in New Jersey and California, installations nationally were up 85 percent from the first quarter of 2011. With production capacity and panel design improving, prices are down 7 percent for residential systems on average, and nearly 12 percent for commercial jobs.
SEIA holds its annual solar finance and tax seminar July 18-19 in New York City.
“The cost has now dropped to the price of an ordinary home improvement,” Mayer said. “For $10,000 to $15,000 net after federal tax benefits and other incentives, the average homeowner can put a system on their roof that will save them 50 to 70 percent of their energy costs.”