Dr. Angiolo Laviziano - The Switch Interview

- [Interviewer] Do you envision solar panels on all these roof someday? - Absolutely, that's my vision and I think in 10 years from now we will see that. People still don't know much about solar. It's changing but it's still relatively new technology which really came about with having more popularity during the last three, four years. - Yeah. - And that's one of the obstacles. So we have to bring the word out, it's one of our jobs out there. Second things is that the technology has matured and has become, as a result, more affordable. So these days, it just makes economically sense for our commercial as well as residential customers to go solar. We have a number of partnerships, an important one is Costco. We really team up with Costco, sell solar systems to Costco members. We like to have strong alliances on the marketing side that give us the, no longer just the feeling you are crunchy guy and you are buying solar but today it's a mainstream solution. We sell solar through employee purchase programs where people get discounts, for example we do that together with Google. Those are just some of the things that we do with companies that will help us ultimately to bring solar to the mainstream. - [Interviewer] So what do we have here? - Here we have the inverter that's responsible for synchronizing the electronics of the system. - Okay, what does that mean? - So it basically means that you have a certain sort of electricity produced by the solar panels. - [Interviewer] Okay. - It's called DC which stands for direct current. - [Interviewer] Okay. - Whereas the grid, where your electricity normally comes from runs on AC which is alternating current. This machine here, which is called the inverter is synchronizing those two. - The electrons come down here, when do they go into the house? - Actually the electrons don't necessarily go into the house, so you're not dependent on is the sun shining or is it not shining. - [Interviewer] Okay. - The electricity actually goes into the grid, the grid is, more or less, a big storage mechanism. - Okay. - And then you get your electricity again from the grid. - [Interviewer] Interesting. - So, that makes it much more flexible. - [Interviewer] Right. - Because imagine-- - [Interviewer] Much more stable. - You are at home, it's 10 PM at night, there's no sun, there's no solar electricity, you still need electricity. - [Interviewer] Right. - And with this machine and with the electricity grid and the cooperation of the utility it works. - Right, so I'm actually not using the electron when I plug in my toaster that's being generated on my roof, necessarily. - No, absolutely not. So, one of the advantages is if a customer is not at home, doesn't consume any electricity, but still generates electricity because the sun is out, the electricity is still flowing, the meter is running backward and the utility now has a small power station that provides power to its grid, which other customers can use. Maybe just over the street here, the neighbor is using the electrons that this neighbor's system is producing. - I see. - So what you can now do is, that a customer can come out and really decide I have my own little utility on my roof and it can be a residential or a commercial customer and more and more make that choice. - Who else gets involved to make all this work well like that? - Typically it would be us, would be companies like REC Solar that stand in between, that are certified to work with electricity. Because, quite frankly, with these things, if you do it wrong, you can kill yourself. - Yeah. - It takes us about four to five weeks to get the process started because there's a bit of paperwork involved. - Right. - In just a few days to install the system. - Okay. - One of the great things of this is, it's very maintenance free. It's a different form of electricity where you have electrons being produced by the panels itself, it's a very direct form of electricity generation. - Right, just in terms of this investment, the homeowner then has gotten some of their own capital but there also is some incentives that are provided to help? - Actually there are two different ways. One is the home owner invests his own money, he might also get it through a loan and then he gets incentives from the utility that's providing some money and from the federal government that's allowing him to offset the 30% of the cost against his taxes. - [Interviewer] Okay. - That is one possibility. An other option that we offer at REC Solar to our customers is that you don't own the system, there is a financial entity that owns the system and sell the electricity to the customer. - Huh. - And as a result, you don't pay upfront, you pay by kilowatt hour. - [Interviewer] So you're renting, basically. - You are renting your solar system and you are paying as you consume the electricity. - You're one of the largest, if not the largest installer of distributed solar in the US, is that right? - Yeah, that's right. REC Solar is the largest one out there. The statistics on it aren't always clear but last year, we installed slightly more than 1,500 for residential customers and quite a few large systems for commercial customers, which makes us largest. In terms of people, it also shows there in 2005, when I joined the company we were 25 people, as of now we are more than 500. Hey guys. - [Interviewer] What are some of the new technologies you see coming? - Generally what I've seen is the efficiency of these panels is increasing. The efficiency means that the power output you get for a given surface area is increasing. - Okay. - And it has increased around one third over the last six, seven years. It's a gradual trend, it becomes more efficient, more and more solar installations, like this one by REC Solar are being done and the costs are coming down. - There are limits, though, to efficiency. I mean, if you talk about the ability to convert sun to electricity, there are limits today, aren't there? - Typically what we have here is a conversion ratio of around 15% for this array, you can go up to 20%. And where it really starts to matter if you want to get as much energy out of a small amount of surface but in many cases, the surface is actually not the restricting factor. - To service this home, for example, that's enough? - Yeah, let's look at it, we could probably put double of what we have here on this roof, but this customer doesn't need more electricity then what this system is providing. - Let's look at distributed solar and utility scale solar. What's your view of how those develop in California in the coming years? - We actually see at the moment that both are developing quite rapidly but they are very different markets and very different challenges. When it comes to the utility scale solar, typically you need your own dedicated transmission lines. Which is an entirely different game. - [Interviewer] Okay. - When you have distributed energy, what you need is one customer at a time that decides I want to have my own energy solution. Both have their own fascinations, both have their own also advantages when it comes to the electricity landscape. - Uh huh, do you see utility scale solar taking off, actually becoming something of a magnitude that would be a substantial part of the electric consumption in the US? - At this moment, when you look at solar, of course it's still a very small fraction of the total energy supply. We are talking clearly less than 1%. I believe, over time, this will significantly increase both in distributed as well as to centralized. And, in the US, it's primarily California, Nevada and Arizona that at this moment putting large utility scale systems in place. Those are systems up to 250 megawatts in size. - Okay, okay. And their challenge is distributing the electricity within transmission lines. - Absolutely, you have the same challenges as for every big power plant. - [Interviewer] Right. - You need dedicated lines. - [Interviewer] Right. - You also need to have the off take for the energy. Again, the same as if you have large utility scale coal powered or nuclear power plant. - [Interviewer] Right. - And that's