 
Atlantis module makers inspecting the process from left, Ben Hopp, Brenda White,Atlantis Senior Vice President Thomas Thompson, Ute Hoop and Nancy Harris.
The phrase here comes the sun is passé, says Thomas W. Thompson, because the time of the sun has arrived. Sunshine, he said, can be used to provide power to cities and remote regions alike and, not incidentally, could provide tens of thousands of good jobs in New York almost as soon as we get serious about using solar power.
To get serious, Thompson told the Opportunity Knocks conference in Fishkill recently, there is a simple and specific change that could make an enormous difference: force the power grid to accept homemade electricity via a “feed-in tariff” instead of continuing the current rebate program. Â
Thompson is senior vice president of Atlantis Energy Systems Inc., a Poughkeepsie-based manufacturer of solar electric building systems. The company manufactures the world”™s first building-integrated photovoltaic system, including solar powered roof-shingles called Sunslates.
He is also chairman of the New York State Solar Energy Industries Association (NYSEIA.org) with the goals of making the Empire State one of the world”™s top 10 markets for solar energy. He said with the huge concentration of population in the Northeast corridor centered in New York, the demand seems promising and the challenge will be to deliver product to fill the need.
For those who may doubt solar power is possible in this climate, he points to Germany, which receives about as much sun each year as Alaska. And yet, Germany has heavily invested in solar energy, creating an economic power base that, in a country of 80 million people has created jobs employing 80,000 people in the solar industry.
New York state has a population of some 20 million people. Thompson said, strictly on a ratio basis, if the Empire State developed a solar industry similar in size to what now exists in Germany, it could provide good jobs for 20,000 workers connected to the photovoltaic industry. And he said that figure does not include other solar products such as solar thermal heating and other appliances.   Â
“Job growth will not stop,” Thompson said. “It will increase every year as we invest in solar, eventually getting up to tens of thousands of jobs in year 20.”
But attracting solar is a competitive field of endeavor and will not happen automatically.
“In Germany, the government put policies in place to create a market and then private capital came forward to fill the demand,” Thompson said.
The most effective step New York could take to spark a homegrown solar industry, he said, would be to create a “feed-in tariff,” a system to purchase or “feed” power from a variety of small to medium renewable energy systems into the central grid. He said the technique has worked elsewhere to spark interest in renewable energy because it guarantees a market for renewable products.
In sum, a feed-in tariff obligates power companies to purchase energy from a distributed generation system that may include rooftop solar arrays or wind power. The equipment would not be used to power the buildings they are built upon, but rather would be designed to contribute to the grid and the power they produce and feed to the system would be bought at by the utility at a price that makes it profitable for building owners to invest in renewable energy systems.
Thompson said a feed-in tariff is a fair method providing of state assistance for solar and other renewable energy systems, because the utility will spread the cost among all its users. Under the current net metering system, solar power is being encouraged through rebates to individual homeowners, so that, in effect, utility customers and state taxpayers are subsidizing individual home improvements as a method of encouraging solar power.
“A feed-in tariff would take New York ratepayers out of the banking business,” said Thompson.
A feed-in tariff slated to last for 20 years, he said, is a better way to spur investment because it provides certainty that a market will emerge. “My boss here at Atlantis is considering making millions of dollars in investment in Poughkeepsie, but he wonders is the market going to be there,” said Thompson. “If the New York state Legislature passed a feed-in tariff law, that gives companies the confidence to make investments.      Â
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“Part of the reason the economy is in the tank is lack of confidence,” said Thompson. “But Wall Street has found strong certainty that the sun will rise every day. Solar power is a known entity that produces power at a very reliable predictable rate. It provides long term surety.” Â
The idea for a feed-in tariff also benefits utilities, he said, because the distributed solar panels provide the most power on hot summer days, just when demand in the Northeast is peaking and stressing the generators and transmission system. Solar systems can be local, and would negate the need for multibillion-dollar investments in power plants and transmission lines and, because they would relieve pressure at peak times, would reduce the chances of a massive blackout. “Utilities may not realize it yet, but solar and utilities are natural allies,” Thompson said.
