CNBC recognizes SJSU solar research

On Monday, CNBC reported on the challenges of solar adoption in a posting entitled “Does the Solar Industry Have a PR Problem?” The jumping-off point for the story by Matt Hunter was a study done by SJSU students from the Sbona Honors Program.

The five marketing honors students — Faith Ebrahimim, Irene Foelschow, Morgan Hancock, Jennifer Sarvian, Tam Tran — completed their study of Silicon Valley (non) adoption in December, and reported their results at a March webinar hosted by SolarTech. This was one of 5 SHP projects sponsored by SolarTech over the past three semesters; I was the faculty advisor or a consulting faculty member for all five.

Here are some excerpts of the CNBC report, which was based on the final project report:

So, what's not to like about solar technology and why hasn't it been adopted by the masses? Is there something wrong with the technology, or does solar just suffer from bad PR?

A recent survey (by solar industry advocate SolarTech and San Jose State University) suggests the latter. A perfect target demographic for solar power — well-off residents of California’s Silicon Valley — have a rather sour perspective on the industry.

According to the survey, only 39 percent of those surveyed saw solar energy as ‘reliable’, and only another 11 percent see it as affordable.

"A lot of advertising dollars are not reaching consumers' ears,” says David McFeely, a director at SolarTech.

Jim Nelson, CEO of solar manufacturer Solar3D, says that, true to the perception, solar technology is not quite ready for prime time.

The problem, says Nelson, is that solar is generally still not price competitive with fossil fuels for energy generation, says Nelson. Paradoxically, government efforts to subsidize the purchase of solar panels actually slow down the adoption of innovation that should ultimately make renewable energy more affordable.

The article also quotes David McFeely of SolarTech as saying local permitting delays and costs are a factor in slowing adoption — the subject of two other SHP student projects, including one just finished last month. (More later).

In the College of Business, we’re used to getting mentioned in the local Mercury-News, but national visibility — particularly for a student effort — is much more rare. Congrats to the students for the recognition of their hard work and value-added.

SJSU insights into slow solar adoption

On Friday, SJSU students and other industry experts presented their latest thoughts on how to speed adoption of residential solar power in the Bay Area. The occasion was a live Internet broadcast entitled “SolarTech Consumer Perception Webinar.” (About 90 people logged on to the broadcast.)

The webinar built on the consumer survey done by five Sbona Honors Program students: Faith Ebrahimim, Irene Foelschow, Morgan Hancock, Jennifer Sarvian, Tam Tran — in the marketing program supervised by Prof. Rob Vitale.

At the webinar, Sarvian introduced the group’s findings. Moderating the live session was Bob Couch of Orogen Marketing, the industry marketing guru who guided the students to their successful conclusion. All the prepared slides for the webinar have been posted to the SolarTech website.

Their presentation was supplemented by an industry panel consisting of Doug Payne (SolarTech), Jeanine Cotter (Luminault), Jessie Denver (City of San Jose and SJSU) and Andrew Yip (PG&E and the California Solar Initiative).

After the students pretested their survey, they diversified their risk by distributing the survey using three separate approaches: mailed (postage stamp and everything), email link and then in person. They obtained 224 answers, but limited their analysis to the 163 respondents from Santa Clara County.

The demographics were generally representative of potential solar buyers: 81% ages 45-64, 81% with some college degree, 74% making $100+K. The only concern was that — compared to the averages for Santa Clara County and for homeownership — the survey dramatically underweighted Asians and somewhat underweighted Latinos. (There is no reason to believe that race plays the same role as income or education in buying a $20K power system.)

Of the respondents, 11% already own solar systems. A total of 55% had done some research into solar purchase, and 49% intend to buy a solar power system.
After Sarvian presented the demographics, Payne summarized some of the other findings. Not surprisingly, consumers were most concerned with price (97%), followed by reliability (94%), warranty (94%), customer service (93%) and financial incentives (91%).

What distressed the panelist was that 83% of those planning to buy a systems won’t do so for at least two years. Yip (a SJSU EE graduate) noted that among California counties, Santa Clara County has by far the greatest adoption under the CSI subsidy program, with 15.3 megawatts and 3,472 systems. (The next largest was Fresno with 9.7 MW and Alameda with 2,065 systems.)

Cotter (CEO of a leading San Francisco installer) also was surprised about the reliability concerns, given that systems subsidized by CSI are required to have a 10-year all-inclusive warranty.

As with other SolarTech-sponsored projects completed by Sbona Honors students, the full report will be posted to the SolarTech website. Still, the webinar and the slides gave a sense of why several industry professionals found the SJSU student findings surprising and provocative, with important implications for how the industry should move forward in the future. (If anyone’s interested, several of the students are graduating in the spring and available for hire.)

Update: the report and slides are available to SolarTech members on the SolarTech website.

New insights from SJSU student researchers

During the fall semester, a team of SJSU marketing students from the Sbona Honors Program surveyed Bay Area homeowners about their knowledge of residential solar panels, particularly focusing on their costs and benefits.

After working with SolarTech, their advisor and sponsor concluded that they had identified some important new insights about the challenges faced in winning adoption of solar panel in California.

On Friday, our students will be presenting their findings at a free webinar broadcast by SolarTech. Their written report will also be posted to the SolarTech website after the webinar.

SolarTech releases COB student finance study

The SJSU Solar Workforce project is a partnership of the College of Engineering and College of Business with the larger SolarTech Workforce Innovations Collaborative. The former draws on Jim Mokri’s existing class on Solar Engineering.

The latter builds on the relationship between the COB and SolarTech created in Spring 2010 through the efforts of two teams of unpaid interns from the Gary J. Sbona Honors Program. One of the teams was of finance students, and the other was of management students.

The results of the finance study were released Wednesday. The report — “Solar PV Financial Calculators: Study and recommendations for public domain financial analysis tools” — is now posted to the SolarTech website.

The focus of the study is at the heart of the economics of renewable energy. To quote the press release:

All solar projects come down to three simple questions:

1. what is the resulting cost per kilo watt-hour as compared to other procurement options;
2. what is the expected return on investment; and
3. what cash-flows or payback period can we promise investors?

The goal of the study was to study the existing public domain calculators on solar return:

• Solar Advisor Model from NREL, the preferred alternative
• Clean Power Estimator from the California Energy Commission
• RETScreen from the Canadian government
• Solar PV Financial Calculator from North Carolina State University

The report was written by Sheirly Caruline, Melissa Kieselbach and Adam Steadman, working with Todd Grenich (head of the the SolarTech finance committe) and David McFeely, head of its external grants program.

This is a great example of how our Sbona Honors students work to solve the problems of local companies and other organizations. The program provides an elite group of 80 students (out of 5,000 undergraduates) to better position themselves for industry careers. I’m proud to be one of the three honors faculty in the Organization & Management department.

In parallel to the finance team, the management students worked on a study of the permitting process by local government agencies. I’ll post a link to that study once it's released by SolarTech.