Catch JC Shore speak on the importance of a strong company culture. See how purpose has elevated Circular Energy through a competitive industry from start-up status to market leader. Share your experiences in companies with unique cultures and the effects on performance as a result.

Thursday, 4 PM
Girlstart
1400 W Anderson Ln
Austin, TX 78757

Register for free on the RISE website.

This session, titled “Building a Brand on Company Culture” is part of RISE week, a week-long series of free presentations on entrepreneurship. See the session description below:

In a nascent, volatile and evolving solar industry, company culture has been the centerpiece that’s helped steer Circular Energy through rapid growth year-over-year. This session will focus on the power of purpose, its importance in growing a business, and differentiating your brand in a competitive market.

More about RISE:

RISE – a Relationship & Information Series for Entrepreneurs – is a nonprofit program that hosts an annual series dedicated to empowering entrepreneurs through a free, crowd-sourced, decentralized conference in which entrepreneurs connect and exchange ideas that inspire the entrepreneurial spirit. Founded for and by entrepreneurs in Austin, Texas in 2007, RISE has grown into an ongoing annual program serving thousands of entrepreneurs and featuring a format that is hands-on and high-energy. RISE was recently named a “Must-Attend 2013 Conference for Entrepreneurs” by Forbes.

About our host, Girlstart:

Girlstart’s mission is to empower girls in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Founded in Austin, Texas, in 1997, Girlstart is one of the few community-based informal education programs in the nation specifically dedicated to empowering and equipping K–12 girls in STEM. Girlstart develops and implements a range of innovative, research-based education and mentorship programs designed to promote girls’ early engagement and academic success in STEM, encourage postsecondary aspirations and persistence in the STEM pipeline among women and other under-represented groups, and develop a diverse STEM workforce for the 21st century.

As such, our Green Team coordinated a special program in honor of the global celebration: all employees were asked to either take public transportation or carpool to the office. Those that drove were asked to bring plants to enhance the office environment.

The results? A near empty parking lot and further beautification of our increasingly decorated office:

The empty Circular Energy parking lot on Earth Day, April 22

For lunch, a large group took the red line metro to a local restaurant, while the remaining workforce shared recipes and dined on homemade meals in the Circular Energy kitchen, which now sports a brand new composting bin.

The event was inspired in part by the Austin Green Business Leaders program scorecard, which offered an additional point for company-wide recognition of Earth Day.  Having earned the Gold level of recognition last year, the Circular Energy Green Team redoubled efforts upon moving offices, earning Platinum status earlier this month.

This is the third year in a row that JC has been asked to speak at a national conference on the subject of solar in Texas. He shared insights and analyses at the 2012 US Solar Market Insight Conference and enlightened architects at the 2011 Texas Society of Architects National Conference, where he will return this fall to talk about behavioral change and energy management.

For those attending the Solar Summit, be sure to attend Monday afternoon’s seminar:

Texas – Unlocking the Sun in the Lone Star State (3:45 – 4:30 pm)

http://www.greentechmedia.com/events/live/solar-summit-2013/agenda

Austin Children’s Shelter protects and heals children, young adults, and families in need. The shelter provides a number of programs and services to help children heal from abuse, neglect or other trauma, and transition to the next phase of their lives.

Circular’s donation consists of the necessary system equipment as well as the system design and installation services. Fronius USA supplied the inverter, while Circular Energy purchased and donated the solar panels and all other requisite materials. The installation will take place next weekend with an official announcement to follow commissioning.

Today, the Austin American Statesman helped spread the word. We enjoyed seeing the installation announced and wanted to provide one point of clarification: Circular Energy is a full-service solar installation provider, not an equipment manufacturer. We handle every step of the “going solar” process in-house on behalf of our clients. This includes design, engineering, permitting, procurement, installation and electrical work.  Circular procures top-tier equipment from reliable suppliers with industry-leading warranties.

Find the announcement in the Austin American Statesman here.

Returning once again to green business profiles, I took the opportunity to visit with Circular Energy’s CEO and founder at their North Austin office.

 

Operations overview
Circular Energy is a full-service solar energy systems company. They do design, installation and maintenance of photovoltaic (PV) systems. They do everything except manufacture the equipment. Circular’s headquarters are in Austin, but they also serve the Dallas/Fort Worth, San Antonio and Houston areas. Beginning in 2009 with a handful of employees they’ve grown to 43 employees currently. The solar installation photos at the bottom show two examples of their residential projects and one of their commercial projects.

 

Type of Customers, Products and Services
They serve residential, commercial and architectural/engineering firm customers. Beyond the design/install/maintenance of PV systems, they offer various payment options and energy management software. Five, ten and twelve year payment plans are available for residential customers. Both loans and leases are also available for commercial customers.

 

Their Curb energy management software “game-ifies” energy use. Curb takes real-time data from various points in a building’s electrical systems and displays it on a customizable dashboard on a computer or mobile device. The dashboard can show how different buildings, floors or even individual offices/classrooms energy usage compares to one another’s. This allows an organization to utilize competitive psychology and best management practices to turn a buildings’ occupants into avid energy managers.

 

Unique Features of this Business
Circular is fanatical about providing the ultimate customer experience. They want their customers to have absolute peace of mind, knowing everything is taken care of.

 

They evaluate solar energy systems on how much energy they produce in kilowatt-hours (kWh) per dollar invested in the system. Usually solar energy systems are priced by dollars per kilowatt (kW) of installed capacity.

 

Trends and Goals
Currently there is a supply glut on the PV equipment manufacturing side with an explosion of new companies in the industry in the last few years. Prices are good now for hardware. Rebates are also good, especially here in Austin.

 

However, Circular’s goal is the long game. They plan to stay in the game by doing four things:
Geographical diversity – this means expanding throughout Texas, into neighboring states and maybe Mexico;
Vertical diversity – offering additional related services and products like the Curb software; Access to credit and leasing options; Efficient customer acquisition process.

 

Favorite Environmental Impact Factoid
They give education and awareness presentations to customers, public and professional organizations like HOAs and architectural/builder associations. They’re honest about the pros and cons of solar energy systems. They admit that not all solar manufacturers behave in an environmentally responsible way. And, of course, the manufacture of solar energy system equipment does have environmental impacts, but it takes less than a year for a typical PV system to generate the same amount of energy required to make the system’s components.

 

Community Involvement
This year Circular is donating all the parts and labor for a 10 kW system for Austin Children’s Shelter.
Education and outreach to public.
Member of the Austin Green Business Leader program.

 

Some closing words . . .
From the CEO’s perspective, he was impressed at the talented people they’d attracted. Their employees truly seem passionate about the company’s mission.

The profile can also be read on the Austin EcoNetwork website.

One particularly interesting point the author highlights is that “virtually all of the residential electricity price increases over the past two decades have occurred since 2000. These increases are due in part to additional capital, operating and maintenance costs….” When utilities offer solar rebates to homeowners and businesses that install panels, they are investing in distributed energy generation — a viable alternative to funding, building, operating and maintaining new power plants.

ACCCE is a partnership of the industries involved in producing electricity from coal, so while the report accredits rising costs to higher EPA standards and increased regulation, the conclusion is only drawn from one perspective – that of ACCCE. However, the data used to arrive at that conclusion remains objective and regardless of the reason why energy costs are increasing, the end result stays the same…

“The study finds that more than half of U.S. households will spend an average 20 percent of their family budget on energy, nearly double what they spent 13 years ago.”

Source: Americaspower.org, ACCCE

1) Solar without any subsidies at all,
2) The status quo (30% federal tax credit), and
3) A reduced 10% federal tax credit

The map also allows for differentiation between the potential for commercial and residential solar installations.

By playing with the various toggles and scrolling over time, one can get a pretty good idea of where widespread grid parity will occur in different parts of the country.

Try the ILSR’s interactive solar map

http://www.ilsr.org/projects/solarparitymap/

While the map is both interesting and entertaining, it brings up a few points. First and foremost, cost varies across the U.S. and even within states or local regions. For example, prices in California are higher than in Texas and many other states, causing CA to raise the national average price. Greentech Media had a post a couple months back that outlined some of the other valid points about grid parity:

Talk of “Grid Parity” is common in the renewable energy industry,

The myth of grid parity goes thusly: one day, the cost of producing electricity from solar generation will fall to levels commensurate with that of fossil fuels. This moment will be a historical inflection point for solar demand. From then onward, deployment will proceed at an explosive, exponential pace for many years.

Forget the difficulty of defining the notion of parity with the grid, which makes it problematic enough to talk about meaningfully without providing a laundry list of assumptions (subsidized or unsubsidized? Wholesale or retail grid prices? Levelized cost or payback period?). The real problem with this neat, monolithic narrative lies with two embedded premises. The first is that the onset of grid parity is a relatively singular moment in time across the history of the world. In truth, the determining variables for any calculation of this sort — insolation levels, subsidies, grid prices, financing structures — vary so widely across geographies that convergence between solar energy costs and grid prices is likely to be decades apart in different regions of the world.

The second problematic premise is that levelized cost is the only barrier to widespread adoption. It doesn’t matter what the LCOE of a $1/W system in rural India is if there is no means to provide financing for the upfront system cost. It doesn’t matter how high grid prices are in Hawaii if there are major transmission bottlenecks preventing deployment.

For both these reasons, anyone expecting the standard “hockey stick” conception of grid parity to bear out is likely to be very disappointed. Instead, the long-term solar deployment curve will probably have more twists in it than a Christopher Nolan film. Simply put, “grid parity” isn’t an event in time; it is a concept, one that is sometimes useful, but mostly misleading.

From Greentech Media article Deconstructing Solar Myths