Back in the '70s, Ralph Jacobson had an epiphany while passing out antinuclear petitions. "I'd get into debates with older guys—who were younger then than I am now—who would ask me, 'So, if we're not going to use nuclear power, then what are we going to use?'" recalls Jacobson, founder of Innovative Power Systems, a designbuild contractor of solar energy systems headquartered in Minneapolis. "As soon as I started talking about solar power and wind, I realized, 'Here I am, 22, and I don't know what I'm talking about.'"
Jacobson decided that, if he truly believed in solar power, he should try to make it work instead of simply spouting rhetoric. "That remains one of my main motivations," he says. "I take great pleasure, every time we bring another system on line, in saying, 'Okay, we made another one work.'"
Jacobson, whose company has designed and installed more than 300 solar energy systems since he started in his garage in 1991, has seen plenty of ups and downs in the industry. The fact that solar power had fallen out of favor after the natural gas industry began to be deregulated in the late 1970s didn't deter him from pursuing an engineering degree with aspirations of landing a job in designing and installing solar heating systems.
But until recently, solar power was hardly an easy sell. "Just five years ago, I was trying to market solar technology to architects, but I couldn't get them to take it seriously," he says. "Even if they were personally interested, they had the perception that they'd be considered flaky by potential customers. Now it's really turned around. I've got architects calling me frequently because there's some competition in the industry about who can be the greenest."
Solar power is enjoying a resurgence chiefly because of rising costs for traditional energy sources. "Deregulating natural gas in the '80s brought the price down because there was a lot of it around," Jacobson says. "Now, however, sources of natural gas are in danger of being fully depleted."
According to Jacobson, solar energy systems eliminate uncertainty because all the costs, aside from annual maintenance fees of 1 to 2 percent, are paid up front. Residential solar heating and solar electric systems typically run from $10,000 to $40,000, with payback taking 13 to 18 years. For commercial heating systems, payback comes in 5 to 10 years. Payback for solar electric systems generally takes 20 to 30 years for residential systems, and 8 to 12 years for commercial. (Commercial payback is shorter due to a federal tax subsidy for such systems.)
"Most of our customers have been people of means and strong ideals," Jacobson says. "They're willing to pay what it takes to have solar or wind power so that they can reduce their environmental footprint. Essentially, our customers are people who think like I do."
Ninety percent of Innovative Power Systems' business is solar, which is evenly split between heating and electric systems; the remaining 10 percent is wind power systems. Sales in 2006 reached $1.8 million, nearly three times as much as the year before.
"The solar industry developed a bad track record in the '80s," Jacobson says. "When salesmen were out there showing the price of natural gas going up forever, and then it falls to half of what it had been, they were discredited. So I tend to be pretty cautious about making wild predictions. I want people to pick solar energy because it's the right thing for them."
One final note: Jacobson has made his peace with nuclear power. "It's not a choice between nuclear or solar power anymore—it's both," he says. "Each can do things that the other can't."
