Celebrating Our BIG Vermont Solar Year!
1 Our Favorite Solar Stories!
Everything we do is about connecting with people. From our educational solar workshops to community events to the solar install and the warm Happy Homeowner house party we host to celebrate going solar – we thrive because of the wonderful network of Vermonters that have raised their hands to go solar. Each solar family, now over 2,500 SunCommon households strong, has their own story to tell.
“Wendell had been dreaming of solar for many years, having spent nearly all his 80 plus years farming on his beautiful property in Hardwick watching the sun trace across the sky as he worked. He could show me exactly where the sun rose and set during different times of the year. He knew he had an incredible spot.” – Silas Ratico, SunCommon Solar Home Advisor
Just this past year we’ve seen a homeowner divest her Mobil oil stocks to invest in solar. A single mother of two moved from her cold, inefficient mobile home to explore an energy efficient and affordable solar-powered modular solution. A 4th generation, 100-year-old Vermont dairy farm family chose to host a Community Solar Array to not only benefit their community but to achieve their own energy independence and economic stability.
A 95-year-old on a fixed income harnessed the power of the sun to heat and cool his home safely and predictably for his remaining years. And a lifelong Vermonter having experienced the advent of indoor plumbing, rural electrification, motor cars and telephone service adopted the innovation of today’s generation, Community Solar, by hosting an array on her land.We are thankful everyday for the innovative Vermonters we have the opportunity to work with. These folks are building our clean energy future. But one such story really rose to the top. Meet Wendall Shepard.
“Wendell wanted solar because it was something he believed in deeply. Solar was less of something for him and more of something for his kids and their kids. Wendell has been on this earth longer than most of us and seen enough change in our environment to want to do his part. I was honored to be able to help him and will always remember the experience.” – Silas Ratico
Wendell’s family approached us earlier this year about building a solar array at his home. They wanted him to have his array in time to celebrate his birthday – July 4th. This birthday was particularly special for Wendell since he was diagnosed with a terminal illness and felt solar was an important piece of his legacy.
We scrambled to meet the July 4th deadline ensuring all teams were prepped to make a timely install. Coordinating an accelerated install can be complicated but each team member was so touched by Wendell’s story and commitment.
Come July 4th Wendell celebrated his birthday alongside his family and his new solar array. We were delighted when Wendell and family visited our Waterbury HQ in the weeks following his birthday party. They made a special trip to share a photo album containing many moments and family photos captured at the array’s big unveil. Truly special, indeed. Thank you Wendell!
2 SunCommon expands in Waterbury!
We’ve grown! Just as the number of solar households has ticked upwards, so has our staff! In just under four years, SunCommon has grown from 4 employees literally in a closet to 65 in our state’s largest net-zero office building. In Vermont, SunCommon built half of the state’s residential solar last year (3 of 6MW) and one-third of the commercial solar capacity according to the U.S. Solar Market Insight report. To meet the rising demand for solar, SunCommon doubled its workforce in 2014.
Creating an innovative and supportive work environment and culture is important to us. We surveyed our staff last year and asked them what they would like to see change here at SunCommon. Top of the list? More space! While we love our current digs at the state’s largest net-zero office building, The Energy Mill, we’ve simply outgrown them. Plus, gathering our growing company in one spot for our ever-important all company meetings and lunches is essential for connecting our field employees and building our culture. So, we needed the square footage to do just that.Local developer Pat Malone is now working on a new 14,000-square-foot office building for us on Route 2, on land that’s been used in the past for a flea market. We’ll lease about 60 percent of the building — 8,500 square feet.
The new building will be net-positive, meaning it will produce even more energy than we use — available as a Community Solar Array right on our roof. Everything — lights, appliances, vehicle charging stations, right down to the building’s heating and cooling — will be solar-powered. No furnace whatsoever, even in Vermont’s notorious climate. “If we wanted to burn fossil fuels, we’d have to pour them on the ground and light them,” said SunCommon co-founder Duane Peterson said of the new building.
3 We divested from fossil fuels and invested in clean energy!
We chose to divest our 401k portfolio from fossil fuels. The divestment announcement was followed by a staff-wide educational presentation by Maeve McBride of 350VT and Dan Quinlan of Divestor.org. In keeping with our legal charter that directs the company to attend to the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit, our employees were offered mutual fund options that support clean energy.
“At SunCommon, we believe everyone has the right to a healthy environment and safer world – and clean energy is the place to start. Divesting from fossil fuels was not just a moral play, it was a financial play. We’ve moved away from fossil fuels and in turn invested in our clean energy future,” said Duane Peterson, president and co-founder of SunCommon.
SunCommon automatically signs up each employee to the company’s 401k retirement plan on their first day of work, matching up to 4% of their salaries. “Those investments now will no longer fuel the planet’s carbon pollution, but will support thriving companies in the clean economy,” Peterson added.
According to a recent analysis presented at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance annual summit, global numbers show more renewable power was added each year than coal, natural gas, and oil combined. This shift began in 2013, when the world added 143 gigawatts of renewable electricity capacity. That same year, plants that burn fossil fuels added 141 gigawatts.
“Today, the US solar industry employs 174,000 Americans nationwide – more than tech giants Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter combined – and pumps nearly $18 billion a year into our economy,” said Rhone Resch of Solar Energy Industries Association.
Vermont has become a proven leader in the growing green economy, but the shift is now happening on a larger scale. “A massive global transition away from fossil fuels is underway,” said Timothy Yee of Green Retirement, Inc., SunCommon’s retirement advisor, “Fossil fuel companies have four to five times more fossil fuels in existing reserves than can be safely burned meaning these inventories will become stranded assets. Investments in fossil fuel companies are, therefore, bad risks. Careful investors recognize the adverse effect that risk poses to their portfolios and act to divest from fossil fuels before a correction occurs.”
4 Solar-powered employees!
Our mission is to tear down the barriers to renewable energy. We make going solar easy and affordable for all Vermonters. Included in our effort? Our employees!
Now that we’ve developed a Community Solar option we’ve greatly increased the number of SunCommon employees able to join our programs. One in every three SunCommon employees has gone solar or became members of our Community Solar Array program this year. And many have installed our solar-powered heat pumps in their homes keeping them warm all winter and cool all summer!
5 Our Solar Babies!
We’ve welcomed 6 new SunCommon babies into the world with 3 more on the way for 2016! Our solar coaster continues to roll and we love the addition of these youngsters as we make our trip around the sun.
6 Solar Milestones!
- We’ve built 12 Community Solar Arrays equaling about 2 MW of energy!
- At the end of the first quarter of 2015, Vermont’s clean energy cluster employed 16,231 clean energy workers at 2,519 business establishments.
- Solar energy workers make up the largest, and fastest growing, part of Vermont’s renewable energy sector workforce.
- We were named the Carbon Cup champions: Vermont WayToGo challenge – 2015
- Our employees voted us Best Places to Work in Vermont – 2014 and 2015
- We are now a Vermont Breastfeeding Friendly workplace – 2015
- Our co-founder Duane Peterson was honored with the VBSR Terry Ehrich Award for Socially Responsible Business 2015
7 Lastly – WE HAD FUN!
We believe in a joyful workplace and bring that ethic to whatever we do with this solar business of ours. Here are a few moments that shine above the rest and we wanted to savor them just a bit longer.
April Fools Day
We gotcha. Our major solar spoof went viral on April 1st as over 41,000 Vermonters viewed our video and “press release” on Facebook alone. Thousands more took to our website and Twitter feeds sharing their concern for this “solar spill” while laughing along with us.
Celebrating our “Holidays”
It’s not (s)uncommon to see us dressed for the “derby”, jumping in the bouncy house, pot-lucking cakes and cookies, donning ugly holiday sweaters, celebrating the Solstice or cruising in the Magic Hat Mardi Gras parade. Oh, and Halloween. We do have Fun. Here are a few of our favorite moments from 2015.