Downturn hasn’t put damper on green jobs in Central Oregon
A boom is expected in the near future, and not just in fields that you’d expect
By Kate Ramsayer – The Bulletin – July 27, 2009

There’s only so many windy patches of Earth — and even fewer patches close to transmission lines.

So for the next five to 10 years, the wind power industry is going to be running full steam ahead, said Mike Costanti, principal with Western Community Energy.

“This industry is growing very quickly — and we feel our company will grow quickly as well,” Costanti said.

He anticipates quadrupling the size of his Bend-based company’s development staff over the next couple of years, with jobs for turbine operators, lawyers, permit writers, electrical engineers, structural engineers, construction workers and more.

“We have a lot of room for growth,” Costanti said.

A study released last month by the Oregon Employment Department found that Oregon had more than 51,000 “green jobs” in 2008. Even with the economic downturn, environmentally friendly jobs were projected to increase about 14 percent by 2010. And in Central Oregon, green employers predict that the area could need people working in a variety of jobs that require a range of skills — from energy auditors to organic farmers to solar electricians.

Wind
There are six different stages to develop a wind farm, Costanti said. And each stage needs people with a different skill set.

“You’ll have the lawyers who need to put the contracts together,” he starts off.

And then permitting specialists to get the necessary OKs, he said. Wind businesses could also use engineers, financing specialists, construction workers and turbine operators.

Western Community Energy currently has seven people its development department, Costanti said, and he could see that number increasing to 30 over the next several years. And there’s plenty of potential employees to choose from — the company gets about 20 résumés per week.

“It’s lit a fire under us to get to work and get as many people to work as we can,” he said.

And once it gets going, wind can create secondary jobs as well — for people who sell goods or provide services to the industry.

“The people who made money in the gold rush in California and Alaska weren’t the gold miners,” he said. “It was the people who were selling the shovels.”

Solar
PV Powered, a Bend solar equipment manufacturer, has hired 10 to 12 people in the past several months, and could add another 40 or so employees by late 2010 as the solar market grows, said Erick Petersen, vice president of sales and marketing with the company.

“We’d love in 10 years to have PV Powered the largest employer in Bend,” he said, though “it could take awhile.”

The company needs engineers and technology professionals, he said, as well as people familiar with the manufacturing business and how to find ways to build things efficiently and without waste. There’s some overlap with the high-tech industry as well, he said.

But applicants need more than a necessary skill set, he said. People need to have a passion for the field, he said, and a desire to help build the industry.

“We see lots of smart, well-paid, talented people sending us résumés, but it takes a little more than that,” Petersen said. “You’ve got to see renewable energy as more than your next great job opportunity.”

Many appear to be seeing the opportunities in installing solar panels, however, said Mike Hewitt, the owner and president of E2 Powered, a Bend solar contractor.

“Every single program that offers any kind of training in solar, it seems like it’s just swamped,” he said.

It takes a lot of work before people can climb up on a roof and hook up solar panels — people have to earn an electrical or solar license, and spend a minimum of 4,000 hours training on the job.

“You can’t hire somebody who may have technical skills off the street,” Hewitt said.

GreenSavers, a Bend company that conducts energy surveys of buildings to diagnose areas where energy is wasted, is planning to hire a person with energy auditing certification from the Building Performance Institute, said Kendra Van Note of Green- Savers.

But that person will have even more training from the Oregon Department of Energy and the Energy Trust of Oregon.

“It’s a pretty intensive program, and they need to be able to complete a certain number of hours in the field as well,” Van Note said.

The energy auditing field will keep growing, she said — but only if customers continue to keep energy efficiency in mind.

“We just don’t want it to be some trend,” Van Note said. “It’s really important that customers are educated about what they can do to make their homes more energy efficient, and that they’re requesting these types of services. Then, the industry will be sustainable.”

Water and soil
Green jobs aren’t just in the renewable energy and energy- efficiency fields — people can have environmentally friendly jobs in watershed or ecosystem management as well, working on efforts to restore damaged environments.

There’s an increasing need for ecosystem management, said Ryan Houston, the executive director of the Upper Deschutes Watershed Council. And funding for projects is on the rise, even if it doesn’t always match the need, he said.

“We really have seen an uptick in the last couple of years, and where that goes in the future is hard to see,” he said.

People interested in watershed management need to have skills in a range of areas, Houston said — from biology and hydrology, to land use planning and economics.

“We look for people who really have the ability to be literate in a variety of disciplines,” he said.

For example, the watershed council is working on a project to restore Whychus Creek as it flows through Sisters — and for that, employees need to understand flooding and erosion aspects, as well as how the state manages floodplains, private property rights and city planning regulations.

“Those folks who are most creative about crossing disciplines are the ones who are going to lead us out of these real tough challenges,” Houston said.

When it comes to green jobs, one growing field, literally, is sustainable agriculture and organic farms.

“Local food is becoming incredibly popular all over the world as a sustainable pursuit,” said Gigi Meyer, owner of Windflower Farm in Bend.

Meyer grows vegetables, herbs, flowers and fruits on a 10-acre farm, and has a waiting list for her weekly Community Supported Agriculture food baskets.

Because organic farmers can’t simply spray chemicals, weeding and other tasks make an organic operation a labor-intensive one, she said. And part of organic farming is not only to respect the land, she said, but to respect employees — she pays her farm crew of four more than minimum wage.

“Given that I grow on such a small area, it actually employs a lot of people,” she said.

And more small, sustainable farms could be on the way in the area, she said, whether it’s vegetable farms or sustainable dairies.

“There’s just so many opportunities that people are just beginning to explore in what our area can support in terms of agriculture,” she said.

The following editorial from Eugene’s Register-Guard suggests that Eugene should aspire to become a “center for the emerging solar power industry” as well as ”solar panel design and manufacture” based in part on Centron Solar’s decision to locate there. 

The editorial notes that, “[m]ost of the 30 companies involved in the consortium would never have heard of Eugene if it weren’t for Centron Solar”.  Actually, the real reason the consortium companies have heard of Eugene is because of Ocean Yuan, the President of Centron Solar.  Yuan graduated from the University of Oregon’s Lundquist School of Business in 1993 and feels that Eugene is “an ideal place for our foothold to establish a logistics center in the United States,” as Eugene is strategically located along the Interstate-5 corridor and can serve the entire West Coast.

It’s too bad that Yuan didn’t go to school in Central Oregon.  If he had maybe Centron Solar would have located it’s current 10 high-level managers plus the 200 to 300 additional employees it plans to hire within a year here.  Central Oregon can also be described as a “strategically located logistics center” – expecially for product design and sales – that can serve the entire West Coast. Plus we have much more solar powering sunshine than the Willamette Valley.

 # # #

A foot in the solar door
Eugene’s solar industry breakthrough still ahead
 
Register-Guard Editorial – July 13, 2009

It’s welcome news that a consortium of 30 Chinese companies in the solar power industry intends to establish its U.S. sales hub in Eugene. If Centron Solar’s sales model works as planned, 200 to 300 salespeople based in Eugene will be selling solar panels nationwide within a year. But Centron will not, in itself, bring a breakthrough of the kind Eugene has been hoping for, one that would make the city a center of the emerging solar power industry.

China is the world leader in the manufacture of solar photovoltaic panels, but the United States remains a relatively small market for Chinese companies — which explains why some of them would prefer to work through a consortium such as Centron. The consortium relieves them of the need to make their own sales, assembly, distribution, installation and service arrangements. Centron offers the Chinese companies a way to enter the U.S. market without making a large investment.

Eugene would be in an enviable position if it became a conduit for world leaders in the solar power industry, although it’s possible that a company would leave the consortium if it found itself supplying a large number of U.S. customers. A solar panel manufacturer might be expected to set up a separate U.S. subsidiary or joint venture once the volume of business justified such a move. Most of the 30 companies involved in the consortium would never have heard of Eugene if it weren’t for Centron Solar, and Eugene might be able to put itself in a position to play a role in their future plans for the U.S. market.

Centron says it also may establish one or two solar panel assembly lines in Eugene, employing up to 50 people. Assembly jobs would be welcome, but assembly is one or two steps down from the top of the food chain — Eugene should aspire to be a center for solar panel design and manufacture. Most assembly is likely to take place near the primary markets for solar panels, which tend to be in found in places where electricity from the power grid is most expensive. That’s not the Northwest, where cheap hydropower keeps electricity prices relatively low.

The long-term growth of the solar panel industry in the United States depends on continued reductions in the price of the electricity the panels produce. Currently, the affordability of solar power installations depends on federal and state tax breaks that cover half or more of the upfront cost. The tax breaks are more generous for commercial installations, which explains why solar panels on businesses’ rooftops have become a common sight, while residential systems remain relatively rare. The subsidies are intended to boost sales volumes, bringing about economies of scale and innovation. The aim should be to encourage the emergence of an industry that needs no subsidies.

Centron plans to push costs down by selling directly to installers, cutting one or more steps out of the distribution chain. Drawing efficient connections between manufacturer and consumer will be a part of the development of a cost-competitive solar industry. A bigger factor, however, will be narrowing the price gap between power from solar panels and power from the grid — and that will depend on technical and manufacturing improvements.

If those improvements could happen in Eugene, Centron might one day have an American-made product to sell. That would mark a true breakthrough in Eugene’s ambition of becoming a center for the emerging solar power industry.

Centron is a foot in the door — but it will take something else to cause the door to swing wide open.

Solar firm given warm reception
With Lane County unemployment at 14.2 percent, the new business is greeted with mostly open arms
By Sherri Buri McDonald – The Register-Guard – July 10, 2009

It’s not the leap that Portland and Salem took into the solar industry by landing major solar panel manufacturers. But a Chinese consortium’s plans to set up a hub here for solar panel sales in the United States could be Eugene’s first step into this emerging industry, said Desari Strader, executive director of the Oregon Solar Energy Industries Association.

“I know there’s another (solar) company kicking tires down there, as well,” she said.

Ocean Yuan is president of Centron Solar, a consortium of 30 Chinese solar businesses eager to gain a foothold in the potentially vast U.S. market.

Yuan told The Register-Guard on Wednesday that Centron Solar had leased a warehouse in west Eugene, assembled a management team of about 10 executives, and planned to hire up to 250 or 350 people in a year. About 200 to 300 of the positions would be “traditional white-collar jobs,” he said, and about 50 would be “green jobs,” assembling solar modules, or panels, for about $20 an hour, including benefits.

He said the consortium did not plan to set up major manufacturing or assembly operations in Eugene. Instead, the group plans to site assembly shops in multiple U.S. cities, closer to customers.

Centron Solar is moving quickly. It set up shop in Eugene two weeks ago, and on Thursday it launched its Web site, which listed seven open positions, including business development directors, technical support engineers and customer service representatives.

In the past year, Lane County has had a string of layoffs, including 1,000 jobs at the former Hynix computer-chip plant in west Eugene, and more than 2,000 jobs at local RV manufacturers.

“(Centron Solar) is certainly going to have a lot of people applying for those jobs,” said Brian Rooney, a labor economist with the state Employment Department.

Even if the consortium creates 200 to 300 jobs, however, it wouldn’t have much impact on the county’s unemployment rate, Rooney said. That rate stood at a seasonally adjusted 14.2 percent in May.

“But at this point any kind of job with decent pay, and especially benefits, will help those individuals” who are looking for work, he said.

The mere mention of hundreds of jobs had Raquel Tucker, assistant branch manager of Selectemp, a Springfield staffing service, attempting to contact Centron Solar on Thursday.

“We’re interested in helping them (with their hiring),” she said.

Chinese firms big on solar industry

Yuan, a ’93 business graduate from the University of Oregon, previously served as president of Solarfun Power USA and as global vice president of Smith & Associates, a semiconductor distribution company, according to Centron Solar’s Web site. Details on the other members of the consortium were not available on Thursday.

Chinese companies have made a big push into the solar panel market and now produce half of the world’s solar panels, Yuan said.

The Chinese manufacturers “have a very strong commitment,” said Jack Roberts, executive director of the Lane Metro Partnership, a local economic development agency. “They have a lot of resources … They’re making a very big play.”

Lane Metro Partnership helped Centron Solar secure the site they’re leasing in west Eugene, Roberts said. No incentives are involved, he said.

“In the hierarchy of solar, you have distribution, assembly and manufacturing,” Roberts said. “Manufacturing is obviously the holy grail,” as far as employment, pay scale, overall investment and the tax base, he said. “Whether these guys will be able to make a larger contribution in the distribution — if they get to 200 jobs it would be great — but we’re kind of working with them to see what happens.”

Other solar companies have expressed interest in Eugene, Roberts said.

“We’d like to get some companies involved in solar interested in working here, whether in distribution or assembly, with an eye eventually to the Hynix location for the manufacturing side,” he said. “That may not happen in one step.”

Hynix initially said it was looking at all possibilities for its shuttered plant: using it itself, using it in partnership with another company, or selling it to another company.

Now, Hynix’s goal is to sell the site, said Bobby Lee, the company’s Eugene spokesman. That could change, however, depending on the market, he said.

The burning question about Centron Solar is whether its direct sales approach will be successful.

The consortium plans to sell directly to solar panel installers, skipping the middle man, thereby lowering the cost.

“That model of selling direct makes some sense,” and it has worked for companies such as Amazon.com, Roberts said. “Fortunately, the way (Centron Solar) is doing it, it doesn’t look like there’s a large upfront investment to carry if things go bad.”

Local installers have mixed feelings

Local solar installers had mixed feelings about Centron Solar’s plans.

Steve Musser, renewables department manager at the Green Store in Eugene, said that Yuan dropped by the store a couple of weeks ago, and they established a good rapport.

Buying panels direct from the manufacturer could reduce prices by 30 percent to 40 percent, Musser said. That’s significant, he said, because the panels usually account for more than half the cost of the solar project.

Musser said he had mixed feelings about buying direct because he has relied on five or six distributors for years. However, he said, “I believe that bringing the cost down by going direct is very beneficial to society and would allow a lot more people to install solar, so I think that is the more important issue. We need to get the panels out there in the field making electricity as soon as possible and as much as possible.”

Musser added that if he does end up buying some panels direct, he’ll still support his distributors as much as possible.

Jim Wilcox, sales and marketing director at Solar Assist, another Eugene solar installer, said he hadn’t yet met anyone at Centron Solar.

He said he wants to learn more about the company and is excited about the possibility of more local solar industry jobs.

“We want to make sure the consumers are well protected by the company,” Wilcox said. “Solar panels generally have a 25-year warranty, so you want to make sure the company is reputable, and they can stand behind the 25-year warranty.

“We want to sit down and meet with them and discuss their products,” he said. “We’ll also do some querying within the industry itself, checking the background of the principals. One of the nice things about the solar industry is it’s a tight-knit group of people who are interested in protecting the integrity of the industry.”

The following Eugene Weekly blog post raises some interesting and to the point questions about Centron Solar.  Is Ocean Yuan, President of Centron Solar simply doing a superb public relations job or is there something not quite right about Eugene’s newest solar industry business?

It is interesting to see the job listing posted for sales reps for Centron Solar on June 16, 2009 on Boston Craigslist by Ocean Yuan.

# # #

Will Centron Solar Jobs Materialize?
by Alan Pittman – Eugene Weekly blog – July 10, 2009

Centron Solar has made front page news with the announcement that it may bring up to 300 much needed jobs to Eugene. But it remains unclear just how much substance Centron actually has and if all those jobs will actually materialize.

“Really, we don’t know what’s real here and what’s not real,” Bob Warren, a state business development officer for Lane County told the Oregonian.

“It doesn’t look like there’s a large upfront investment,” Jack Roberts, director of the Lane Metro Partnership told The Register-Guard.

Here’s some other details that also raise questions about the substance of the Centron Solar operation:

• The newspapers stories appear to rely entirely on one person, Ocean Yuan, for all their information about the company.

• Large Chinese manufacturing companies are alluded to as partners but not named and quoted.

• The company doesn’t appear to have much physical presence beyond its relatively small new website . The site registrant address is listed as a private home in south Eugene.

• The small rented warehouse location doesn’t look like much.

• With manufacturing done in China, it’s unclear what exactly people in Eugene would be doing. Is it a sales call center? An assembly facility? A corporate headquarters?

• Of the six people listed on the website as part of the company “management team,” only two live in Eugene. Two live in Portland, one in Vancouver, Washington and one in Atlanta, Georgia.

Chinese startup based in Eugene wants to sell inexpensive solar panels in U.S.
by Amy Hsuan –  The Oregonian - July 09, 2009

A Chinese startup vying for a piece of the U.S. solar market has landed in Eugene, hoping to become a national player in the state’s growing photovoltaic industry.

Centron Solar, whose Web site went live Thursday morning, is moving fast to sell and distribute bargain-priced solar panels made in China to the U.S. market, expected to be the world’s next big solar player.

But the company didn’t even have a name until last month. It leased its Eugene headquarters and 25,000-square-foot warehouse within two weeks. Its first shipment of solar panels, worth $1 million, arrived from China just five days ago.

The company, the brainchild of Eugene resident Ocean Yuan, is moving so fast that it caught state economic development officials — and potential competitor SolarWorld — by surprise.

“Honestly, this was news to us,” said Tim McCabe, director of the Oregon Business Development Department, who learned about the company’s launch on Thursday. “If it’s true what I’ve heard, it’s an exciting prospect.”

With a mission to sell solar energy at $1 a watt within a few years, Centron represents the unconventional — and aggressive — tactics of Chinese companies, now driving competition in nearly all sectors of manufacturing.

The company, currently with 10 employees, plans to sell panels directly to installers, cutting out the middlemen. Although the bulk of its manufacturing will remain in China, it plans to build several assembly plants across the country within the next couple of years, including one in Eugene, which will be home to a customer-support division. By early next year, the company expects to have between 200 to 300 employees.
“We’re moving at lightning speed,” said Yuan, a former executive for Solarfun, a major Chinese solar manufacturer, who was born in China and moved to Eugene 20 years ago. “We are so excited to get this off the ground.”

Chinese manufacturers are hungry to enter the U.S., which is expected to follow Europe’s lead in solar energy in the coming years. They are able to produce solar panels at lower costs than Americans or Europeans because of their low wages. And Centron promises that it can beat any price by at least 10 percent.

“Our mission is very clear, we want to make solar panels so cheap that 80 percent of American households can use it without subsidies,” Yuan said.

In the solar industry, lowering costs for solar panels has become a race to get to grid parity, the point at which solar can produce power to compete with conventional fossil fuels. It’s typically been pegged at about $1 a watt, though it’s higher in some areas.

Centron, despite being a newcomer to Oregon and the U.S., hopes to challenge SolarWorld and Sanyo, both now in Oregon. The company has already contacted 25,000 installers nationwide, Yuan said.

SolarWorld opened the United States’ largest solar plant on a 100-acre Hillsboro campus last fall, putting Oregon on the map. The company, with a strong reputation in the industry, is one of the older solar manufacturers.

Competition, says spokesman Ben Santarris, is everywhere and Centron’s foray into the U.S. may not make much of a difference.

“From our standpoint, we already have a lot of competition,” Santarris said. “We’ll have to see how big they are and how they operate. If it’s good for Oregon, it’s good for us. “

So far, Centron has gotten to where it is so quickly by doing everything unconventionally. Centron isn’t vertically integrated like other big solar companies such as SolarWorld. It’s horizontally integrated, Yuan said.

The modules sold in the U.S. are put together by 30 different companies in the solar hub of China, located in or near Jiangsu province on the outskirts of Shanghai. The companies specialize in manufacturing different components of a solar panel, from converting silicon to manufacturing cells.

They are assembled and then sold in the U.S. under the Centron brand, which was specifically created for the U.S. market with the help of Springfield-based marketing firm Polaris.

Yuan, 46, is an entrepreneur with experience in Chinese factories and the solar industry. In March, he left his two-year post as president of U.S. operations of Solarfun, one of China’s largest solar manufacturers, to pursue his own venture. By then, he already had a good idea of what he wanted to do: sell quality solar panels to Americans at extremely low prices.

A former English teacher from a rural province, Yuan moved to the U.S. after meeting a Eugene woman traveling in China. They married in 1990, and he received his degree in business and finance from the University of Oregon, going to work initially importing and exporting antique Chinese replicas.

“I came to the States in 1990, wanting to make millions,” Yuan said. “But I found the limited English I learned in China didn’t even work at a grocery store.”

Yuan worked his way to becoming the general manager of large Chinese factories making electronic components for companies such as Motorola. After moving to Shenzhen for eight years, he decided he missed the U.S. When the job offer from Solarfun allowed him to relocate, he moved back to Eugene.

With Centron, Yuan set about putting together a business model that cut out distributors in order to lower retail prices. Former Intel engineers helped him design the specifications for the modules. Then he went back to China this spring to find the companies who could make the panels with the specifications and quality he desired. The companies, he found, were thrilled at the opportunity to sell to the U.S.

“Instead of all these companies coming to the U.S. to compete independently,” Yuan said, “we decided to try to do something completely new.”

Centron’s leap into Oregon causes some to question its sky-high ambitions. And as a newcomer, it will take time to build a trusted brand and it will face perceptions that China’s cheap prices equal poor quality.

Bob Warren, business development officer for the state’s Business Oregon in Lane County, said he met with Yuan and some Chinese representatives several months ago and at the time they had yet to form a concrete plan.

Centron didn’t ask the state for any tax incentives or grants in their startup, though if they locate a manufacturing facility in Eugene, they could qualify.

“Really, we don’t know what’s real here and what’s not real,” Warren said. “It doesn’t look to me in the immediate future there are manufacturing jobs.”

Already, Centron has given samples of its panels to some installers, including the state’s largest solar contractor and designer Advanced Energy Systems, which is currently testing them.

“We’re doing a comparative analysis with all the best equipment in the world,” said Chad Biasi, a business development consultant with AES. “But they absolutely have a chance. Our market is just beginning.”

Chinese group plans local solar panel hub
Centron Solar’s planned sales site and assembly lines eventually could bring several hundred jobs to Eugene
By Sherri Buri McDonald – The Register-Guard – July 9, 2009

A consortium of 30 Chinese companies in the solar panel industry is setting up a U.S. sales hub in Eugene, the group’s president, Ocean Yuan, told The Register-Guard on Wednesday.

The group, named Centron Solar, has leased a 25,000-square-foot warehouse in west Eugene, has 10 high-level managers on board and has ambitious plans to grow to 200 to 300 employees in a year, Yuan said.

The group probably also will set up one or two solar panel assembly lines in Eugene, creating about 50 “green” jobs. Those positions would pay about $20 an hour, including benefits, he said.

The group’s members — mature manufacturers with proven technologies — have banded together to serve the vast potential market for affordable solar panels in the United States, Yuan said.

“Instead of coming in here by themselves and confusing the market with company names that the average American can’t even pronounce, we decided to combine forces and create an easy-to-pronounce, easy-to-remember name, which is Centron Solar,” Yuan said.

Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy said she had met with the group’s representatives a couple of times, but hadn’t spoken with them recently.

Of course, we’re very interested in solar,” she said. “We believe it’s right for Eugene and right for our community energy goals.”

Piercy said that if Centron Solar does end up creating hundreds of jobs in Eugene, “it would be terrific. It would be wonderful. We’ve been really trying to encourage solar development here.”

A couple of other solar businesses besides Centron Solar have expressed interest in Eugene, Piercy said. “We’ve been following all the leads we get.”

Solar panel manufacture uses technologies similar to semiconductor manufacture. When Hynix closed its computer-chip plant in west Eugene last year, eliminating 1,000 jobs, it set off speculation that a solar manufacturer might take up residence there.

Yuan said his group looked at the former Hynix plant in March.

“The problem is it’s too clean,” he said. “We don’t need the cleanest of clean rooms for solar panel manufacture. The (cost of) maintenance and everything else is too high.”

Centron Solar moved into its Eugene facility at 4723 Pacific Ave., off Danebo Avenue, two weeks ago, and is storing solar panels there, Yuan said. “We’re already running out of space,” Yuan said. “We’re already eyeing the office complex in front of Hynix,” referring to the Westec Business Park.

Centron Solar plans to revolutionize the way solar panels are sold in the United States, he said.

“Our business model is different from anybody else in the solar business,” Yuan said. “We sell directly to installers, rather than going through distributors, so that keeps the cost lower.

“We want to make solar panels so cheap that 80 percent of American families can afford to use them and save electricity for the next 20 to 30 years.”

Financial details of the consortium’s plans were not disclosed.

The companies in the consortium already make solar panels in China, Yuan said.

“China produces over 50 percent of the world’s solar panels, but 90 percent (of them) are shipped to Europe,” he said. Only 5 percent of the solar panels in the U.S. market are produced in China, Yuan said.

The consortium would continue to make the panels in China, but “our vision is to establish multiple assembly shops around the nation in key U.S. areas,” he said.

Centron Solar probably would not site a large assembly plant in Eugene because it is not a major solar market, Yuan said.

“We want to build our manufacturing facilities closer to the customer,” he said.

The consortium has, however, chosen Eugene as “an ideal place for our foothold to establish a logistics center in the United States,” Yuan said. He said Eugene is strategically located along the I-5 corridor to serve the West Coast.

Yuan is not a newcomer to Eugene. He graduated from the University of Oregon’s Lundquist School of Business in 1993.

Greg Evans, a local educator, consultant and Lane Transit District board member, said he met Yuan when Yuan was a UO student, and the men have been friends for 20 years.

“This is very legitimate. Trust me,” Evans said.

“They’re the real deal.”

Evans said he has no financial interest in Centron Solar but that he is a consultant for the group in government affairs.

Centron Solar plans to formally announce its launch at the InterSolar 2009 trade show next week in San Francisco.

New Biomass Power Plant to Bring Jobs to La Pine
By Doug Johnson – KOHD-TV News – June 29, 2009
 
In 18 months 10 acres on the corner of Reed Road and Mitts Way in La Pine, will be transformed into a biomass power plant, able to produce almost twenty megawatts of electricity. The plans were approved Monday morning, by the Deschutes County Board of Commissioners.
 
“Going to add to the economy, going to create jobs, they’re going to produce steam, that will maybe be able to use in other applications, other businesses,” says Susan Ross, Director of Property and Facilities for Deschutes County.
 
Biogreen Sustainable Energy out of St. Helens Oregon will build and operate the plant. It expects the plant to bring twenty direct jobs, with as many as ninety indirect jobs such as trucking and forestry to follow. In addition, the company says about one hundred construction jobs should be created in the next four months.

 
“Yeah I’m hoping it can build up around here, because I know this building’s been here a few years and no one else has built around it,” says Justin Doerfler with Toney Construction Company, who’s shop is close to the plant’s site.
 
The plant will use biomass fuels, such as slash piles, forest undergrowth and wood construction materials, to boil water creating steam, which is used to turn a turbine and create electricity. At this time most fuels are being removed from private timber lands, but soon Biogreen says it will partner with wood recyclers to bid on US Forest Service thinning programs. The county says the process is clean, with pollution almost non-existent. There are four other similar plants in Oregon, including on by Roseburg and another by Medford. Other businesses, such as a wood pellet plant, could partner with the biomass plant in the future to share the steam.
 
“There isn’t a whole lot going on anywhere obviously, you know that, and especially in la pine a small town like this, any work would help definitely,” Doerfler says.

The Craigslist post below is typical of the sales reps jobs available postings across the U.S. by Centron Solar.  A quick search found Craigslist posting in Philadelphia as well as a listing on Monster.com and Indeed.com.

# # #

Sales Reps for Solar Modules: Big Money (Anywhere There Is A Sunshine)

Reply to: oyuan@centronsolar.com
Date: 2009-06-16, 9:51AM EDT

Independent Sales Reps for Solar Modules – All Regions in North America
About the Job

Description:

Centron Solar is the first and only large scale consortium of solar
manufacturers providing high quality, low cost mono- and
poly-crystalline solar modules. Headquartered in Eugene, Oregon, USA,
Centron Solar revolutionize how solar modules are sold in the
marketplace, hence bringing unprecedented financial benefits to
installers, system integrators and project developers alike in North
America.

Centron Solar consortium’s manufacturing capacity exceeds 500MW (revenue over $1 billion)
modules annually and rapidly expanding to 1GW within 2010. With large
warehouses and logistic capabilities in North America, Centron Solar
creates a streamlined supply chain with on-demand delivery, no minimum
order quantity, competitive per-watt pricing, extended warranties,
enhanced customers services and simplified payment terms.

Built on a revolutionary business model of collaboration and
efficiency, Centron offers the solar industry a next-generation
solution for delivery clean power, in which, mature, market-proven
manufacturing processes are combined with an optimized, U.S.-based
supply network. Founded by Ocean Yuan, a seasoned executive in the
field of integrated manufacturing supply chain solutions, and
inclusive of world class PV experts, reliability testing, new product
development, quality control teams on the manufacturing ground,
Centron Solar is committed to achieve grid parity, advance solar
energy and the adoption of clean energy around the world.

In addition to the following jobs, we are also seeking lead regional reps who can train and lead others to perform.

Job Purpose:
Sells solar panels directly to your local contractors, installers, system integrators, developers and earn big commissions fast.

Duties:

* Achieves sales objectives by building relationships with your local installers;

* Meets easy to caculate financial objectives by identifying real customers, their target prices and position us to win businesses;

* Recommends product lines by identifying new product opportunities, and/or product, packaging, and service changes; surveying consumer needs and trends; tracking competitors;

* Updates job knowledge by participating in educational opportunities; reading professional publications; maintaining personal networks;

* Accomplishes sales and organization mission by completing related results.

Skills/Qualifications:
Meeting Sales Goals, Motivation for Sales, Territory Management, Presentation Skills, Performance Management, Building Relationships, Emphasizing Excellence, Negotiation, Results Driven, Sales Planning, Managing Profitability

Hiring Organization: Centron Solar, Inc.
Location: Anywhere There Is A Sunshine
Compensation: Strictly commission based, lots of money to be made, easy formula for success!
Telecommuting is ok.
This is a part-time job.
This is a contract job.
OK to highlight this job opening for persons with disabilities
Principals only. Recruiters, please don’t contact this job poster.
Phone calls about this job are ok.
Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

PostingID: 1224052313

Green and on top
By Andrew Moore - The Bulletin – June 14, 2009

Solar. Wind. Water. Geothermal, biomass and even garbage. With all these opportunities, it’s no wonder Oregon leads the nation in clean energy. And based on the number of alternative energy firms sprouting up in Central Oregon, it seems only natural that growth in green jobs has far outpaced the national average.

Rod Page, who lives just north of Bend, is concerned about the nation’s energy consumption. Accordingly, he drives a biodiesel-fueled car and later this week will have solar panels installed on his roof to help power his home.

He’s wanted to install them for more than two years, but found it cost-prohibitive. Now, thanks to state and federal tax credits, the cost has come down enough to make economic sense for Page.

But this isn’t really a story about solar power. It’s about the demand created by folks like Page who are helping to fuel rising employment in the clean-energy sector.

In other words, green jobs.

According to a report released Wednesday by The Pew Charitable Trusts, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit, jobs in the country’s clean-energy sector grew at a rate of 9.1 percent between 1998 and 2007, compared with total job growth of only 3.7 percent in the same period.

In Oregon, the number is greater. According to the report, jobs in Oregon’s clean-energy sector grew at a rate of 50.7 percent between 1998 and 2007, compared with total job growth of 7.5 percent in the same period. That means Oregon, with upwards of 1,600 clean-energy companies, has more green jobs than any other state.

The report doesn’t break out data below the state level, but based on the number of clean- or renewable-energy companies that have set up shop in the region in the last decade, the number of jobs created in Central Oregon has been significant.

Solar growth

Sunlight Solar Energy Inc., a Bend company which designs and installs solar power systems, and which will install a system at Page’s house this week, has grown from three employees in January 2008 to nine currently, said spokesman Chance Currington. That’s 200 percent employee growth in 1½ years.

That doesn’t count the 25 people the company employs at its installation office in Milford, Conn., that opened in 2004 or the six people that work out of the company’s Newton, Mass., office that opened in January.

Currington said Sunlight, though founded and based in Bend, opened offices in the Northeast because of surging demand there for solar power systems, partly because of generous government incentives but also because electricity costs are much higher in New England.

Locally, Currington said, Sunlight is booked through August. That’s noteworthy because in the three years he’s been with the company, the longest it had been booked out was three weeks. He attributes the growth in demand to various factors, including falling prices for materials and rising costs for electricity.

Also key to the growth in demand was the extension of the federal solar investment tax credit by Congress late last year. Rather than an incremental one- or two-year extension, the credit was extended for eight years and a $2,000 cap on the credit was eliminated.

It allows purchasers of solar energy systems to recover 30 percent of the system’s cost in the form of a one-time tax credit that reduces their income tax liability. For example, a $10,000 solar system would yield a $3,000 federal tax credit.

“The extension of the tax credit, it added stability, and that stability has been huge for us,” Currington said.

For customers of Pacific Power, Sunlight can now install residential solar systems for roughly $14,000, Currington said. But thanks to a $4,000 cash incentive from Energy Trust of Oregon, the out-of-pocket expense drops to $10,000. Add the federal tax credit and a four-year Oregon tax credit of $1,500 annually, and the eventual cost is less than $1,000.

“Once they could come down and put in a reasonable system for under $10,000, it made sense for me,” Page said. “With the incentives they have out now, it just kind of makes some sense and hopefully we’ll be able to save some money over the long run and the house’s value will go up. It’s a long-term investment for me.”

Page said he expects to make up the system’s remaining costs in energy savings after five years.

Other growth

Central Oregon is home to a number of renewable-energy companies that weren’t here a decade ago.

Bend’s PV Powered, which manufactures solar power equipment and employs roughly 55 workers, recently announced a major investment that will allow the company to hire more workers to help manage its expected growth.

The company’s CEO, Gregg Patterson, said in a previous interview with The Bulletin that he expects the company to double or triple its employees by the end of next year and that it’s his ambition to eventually be Bend’s largest employer.

Also in Bend is InEnTec LLC, a waste-to-energy company that recently announced a joint venture with Houston-based Waste Management, a Fortune 500 company with more than $13 billion in revenues. Their venture, S4 Energy Solutions LLC, will be based in Houston, but its Bend-based CEO, Jeff Surma, anticipates hiring up to 20 engineers to staff its Bend office in the next few years.

Western Community Energy, a wind power company, recently relocated to Bend from Montana and announced plans to hire more workers.

There’s also Vulcan Power Co., a Bend-based developer of geothermal energy projects.

According to the Pew report, there were more than 1,600 clean-energy companies operating in Oregon in 2007, providing more than 19,000 jobs — or more than 1 percent of the jobs in the state. While that number may seem slight, it still means Oregon has more jobs in its clean-energy sector than any other state, said Kil Huh, a Pew spokesman.

In addition, the report named Oregon among the top three states, along with Colorado and Tennessee, with the fastest clean-energy job growth in the nation.

And in the three years between 2006 and 2008, clean-energy companies in Oregon attracted $70 million in venture capital investment.

What explains the growth?

Part of the reason has to do with Oregon’s geography and a basket of different natural resources that can be tapped for energy, including solar, wind, tidal, geothermal and biomass, said Bruce Laird, with the Oregon Economic and Community Development Department and the state’s top business development officer for renewable energy.

There’s also a history and culture of environmental stewardship — evident in laws regarding land use, recycling and emissions — rooted in the state and on the West Coast, Laird said.

Add government policies that encourage the adoption of green technology, and it’s the equivalent of hanging out a flashing welcome sign, said Laird, noting that 70 percent of the business leads the department receives regarding companies expressing interest in relocating to Oregon are from renewable-energy companies.

“These renewable technologies and policy-support positions are West Coast movements, so many of these companies are naturally gravitating toward the West Coast,” Laird said. “You gotta be lucky every once in a while, and I think we might qualify in that category, because we do have good natural resources.

“But our best resource has been the commitment of the population to green solutions and environmental sustainability, and that’s why I think it’s given us a good foundation and a great opportunity. … We’re leveraging our values into jobs, and that should be no great surprise.”

Garbage never smelled so sweet
InEnTec of Bend has partnered with Waste Management Inc. to build its trash-to-gas machines at landfills across the country. The result could be a renewable energy dream — and InEnTec is promising big returns for Central Oregon, in the form of green energy.
By Andrew Moore – The Bulletin – June 07, 2009

[To learn more about ‘Melting’ garbage: How it works see end of article.]

Two weeks ago, Bend-based InEnTec LLC announced a joint venture with Houston-based Waste Management Inc., a Fortune 500 company with more than $13 billion in revenues.

While a big step for privately held InEnTec, a small waste-to-energy company that relocated to Bend last year from Richland, Wash., it also promises big returns for Central Oregon.

The new joint venture, called S4 Energy Solutions LLC, will be based in Houston but is opening an office in The Old Mill District, adjacent to InEnTec’s office. S4 will eventually employ more than 20 chemical and other engineers, generally earning more than $100,000 a year, according to Jeff Surma, a founder of InEnTec and S4’s first CEO.

They are the sort of high-paying green jobs that politicians love to promise, working with technology that turns everyday garbage into fuel and other products without any harmful emissions. But InEnTec hasn’t been visited by presidential candidates promoting renewable energy, or sitting senators touting the green spending in the stimulus bill.

“You’d think it would be the perfect opportunity,” joked Surma, who stepped down as InEnTec’s CEO two weeks ago to take the same position with S4, though he will stay in Bend.

Perhaps converting garbage into energy isn’t as sexy or as simple as harnessing the sun and wind. Rather, Surma chalks up the company’s “under the radar” existence to emerging technology — using super-hot plasma to convert trash into synthetic gas that can be refined into hydrogen or ethanol — that is only now ready for commercialization on a scale that could make it as well known as the solar panel or the wind turbine.

“If we ever get to a hydrogen economy, this technology would be a fantastic source of distributed hydrogen that would make hydrogen available all across the country,” said Surma, referring to the widely held vision of a future in which zero-emission, hydrogen-fueled cars have weened the nation from its dependence on oil.

InEnTec’s joint venture with Waste Management envisions S4 building InEnTec’s Plasma Enhanced Melters at many of the more than 180 landfills Waste Management operates throughout the country.

Waste Management operates landfills in Portland and Seattle. In Central Oregon, the region’s landfills are operated by county governments.

That means, for the most part, InEnTec’s work will go unnoticed in Central Oregon. But it and S4 are likely to contribute to the region’s quality of life — the reason the company relocated here, Surma said — thanks to its high-paying jobs and the promise of growth.

“That’s why we’re so excited for InEnTec and their announcement,” said Roger Lee, executive director of Economic Development for Central Oregon. “Because of all the strategic partnerships they bring in different sectors, developing technology that has huge applications worldwide, if we can concentrate that brain power here, that’s going to have lots of spinoff things with it, including this recent announcement. It’s exactly what we had hoped to come out of this one company relocating.”

Surma first encountered plasma technology in the 1980s at Battelle’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, where he found work after earning a chemistry degree from the University of Minnesota and a master’s degree in chemical engineering from Montana State University.

Plasma technology then was primarily being researched for its feasibility in processing radioactive waste, Surma said. His work there led to a fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

One night after work in a pizza restaurant near the lab, Surma said he and his research partner started sketching out ideas on a napkin about using plasma technology to process other kinds of waste. A company was born.

“It takes 30 to 50 years for garbage in a landfill to degrade to produce methane. Our process essentially does something equivalent in a matter of seconds,” Surma said. “We can capture the energy value in waste in seconds rather than years.”

Surma returned to Richland, where several patents were filed for the technology and the processes they created. The company initially focused on converting medical waste and other chemical waste streams that were considered high-value because of the cost of traditional disposal.

Several of the devices were installed in Japan and Taiwan. Those initial units can handle up to 25 tons of garbage a day.

As the company grew and Surma realized its potential, he said he wanted to relocate to a place where it would be easier to attract new employees. He settled on Bend.

InEnTec currently employs 24, but the bulk remain in Richland, where InEnTec maintains its research facility.

Surma said the deal with Waste Management is the next step in InEnTec’s evolution. Surma said he didn’t want to sell InEnTec but instead partner with a company that has the resources to scale up the technology.

At first, Surma said S4 will build smaller Plasma Enhanced Melters for Waste Management that can process high-value waste streams like medical waste, but the goal is to eventually process municipal waste. To be economically efficient, PEM units for municipal waste would need to process 125 tons of garbage a day.

Additionally, Surma said the PEM units can be placed side by side to handle more capacity.

S4 will be responsible for building the units and designing the processes to handle the material input and output. That means the company is likely to create hundreds of jobs, from design and construction to operation.

“We view this as a real boon to the overall economy,” Surma said.

Joe Vaillancourt, of Houston, is S4’s new senior vice president and a former managing director at Waste Management. He said Waste Management has been researching waste-to-energy technologies for years. Vaillancourt couldn’t say whether InEnTec’s PEM technology will revolutionize the garbage industry, but he said it has incredible economic potential.

“Some waste, like electronic waste and auto waste, isn’t treated in a very efficient economic way, but there is lots of energy value in some of this waste that hasn’t been captured historically,” Vaillancourt said. “So from an energy-independence perspective, there’s a difference that can made in disposing of certain waste streams and this technology hits that sweet spot.”

‘Melting’ garbage: How it works

InEnTec’s Plasma Enhanced Melter, located in Richmond, Wash., converts municipal garbage and other forms of waste into synthetic gas that can be further refined to produce hydrogen and other fuels. The system essentially zaps waste — from household garbage to hazardous medical waste — at 20,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which breaks down all organic material in the waste and converts it to hydrogen and carbon monoxide.

A range of fuels
Whatever inorganic materials remain fall out of the plasma furnace into a molten glass bath. Once cooled, the obsidian-like material can itself be processed and sold as grit for sandblasting or ground up for use as an asphalt aggregate. The leftover hydrogen and carbon monoxide, known as synthetic gas or syngas, can then be further processed into pure hydrogen, ethanol, methanol, even synthetic diesel and gasoline, said Jeff Surma, a founder of InEnTec. Syngas also can be burned as a fuel, like natural gas.

No incineration, no emissions
Despite the heat involved in the PEM process, the waste isn’t burned or incinerated but instead converted to syngas. As a result, the process doesn’t produce any harmful emissions typical of a garbage incineration plant, according to Surma. “We never use the ‘I’ word in this business,” Surma said.
Video on the Web

To get a sense of InEnTec’s patented Plasma Enhanced Melter technology, visit the company’s Web site, www.inentec.com, and watch an informational video posted there.