The More Things Change

I should have titled this column "The Best Laid Plans" to describe the difference between where I thought I was going with my new venture and where I ended up.

My departure from Energy Innovations in June really couldn't have gone better. We made a very smooth transition to the new management team led by Andrew Beebe & Joe Benga, formerly head of projects at PowerLight. And I had the pleasure of going out on a very positive note, winning the largest ever US corporate PV project in a competitive bid for Google's business. We actually won the project in the early part of 2006, but were barred from disclosing the project until it was announced at the SolarPower 2006 event mid-October. It's an amazing project that really reflects the spirit and vision of the team at Google--I'm looking forward to seeing the project commissioned in 2007!

What happened after my departure was a bit less systematic. I had planned to take six months to work on several business ideas I had been kicking around and spend some time with my family.  I had also planned to blog a bit about the process of founding my next venture. Hah. No such luck.

There were three ideas I was looking at closely--one in consumer carbon emissions/neutrality, one in large scale carbon offset projects, and one in large scale solar project development. The solar developer idea is one I've been thinking about ever since I started Prevalent Power in 2001. For any number of reasons, mainstream solar is not going to happen according to the current model of selling multi-million dollar onsite solar power systems to big companies to own and operate themselves. That's a green-motivated, early adopter buying pattern that I believe will fade as the market grows.

For solar power to go mainstream, the risk of ownership has to be handled by someone much better equipped to make all of the the design, technology, construction, and operating choices. The capital has to come from sources that are well matched to the risk-return profile of a solar project. And, the end user has to be given a simplified business proposition--eg energy savings, green power, a price hedge--packaged as a service.

What wasn't as clear to me back in 2001 was how to overcome the business model hurdles to achieve the necessary scale. Over the last year however, I had been talking with some insightful guys--Don Hutchison, Allen Anderson, and Matt Garlinghouse--who had some innovative ideas about how build a scalable solar development business. Long story short, I found myself pitching the idea to some very supportive investors just two days after leaving Energy Innovations. A week or two later, we had the money and Recurrent Energy was born.

We're heads down building the team and preparing to launch our first series of projects next year--which is why I haven't posted anything since last Spring. I don't expect to post too much about the business--it turns out blogging about startups is a bit like blogging about a new romance, you don't necessarily want everyone knowing all the details! But as I find time, I expect to renew blogging about all the other things that are happening in the solar power and clean energy universe.

In any case, it feels nice to be back online talking about the topics that interest me. I look forward to getting back in touch with readers and hearing what you all think.

Comments

[Idea Guy]

Hi Arno,

Good for you to be back doing online. You have great ideas for sure. Good luck to you..!

Keep it up..