Centron Solar Sales Reps Job Listed Across the U.S.

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.

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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.

Oregon is a National Green Jobs Leader

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.

Progress Made on Building-Integrated Photovoltaics

Energy lab says flat solar panels may be option
by Eric Mortenson – The Oregonian – June 12, 2009

Flat solar panels could fit on roofs like shingles. A transparent thin film barrier used to protect flat panel TVs from moisture could become the basis for flexible solar panels that would be installed on roofs like shingles.

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., are working on flexible rooftop solar panels.

The panels — called building-integrated photovoltaics, or BIPVs — could replace boxy solar panels that are made with rigid glass or silicon and mounted on thick metal frames. The flexible solar shingles would be less expensive to install than current panels, and made to last 25 years.

“There’s a lot of wasted space on rooftops that could actually be used to generate power,” senior scientist Mark Gross said in a news release. “Flexible solar panels could easily become integrated into the architecture of commercial buildings and homes. Solar panels have had limited success because they’ve been difficult and expensive to install.”

Researchers at PNNL will create these flexible panels by adapting a film encapsulation process currently used to coat flat panel displays that use organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs. The work is made possible by a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement recently penned between Vitex Systems and Battelle, which operates PNNL for the federal government.

Laboratory researchers developed the thin film technology in the 1990s. At the time, the lab’s team investigated 15 possible applications, including solar power. Vitex licensed the technology from Battelle in 2000 and focused its initial efforts on developing the ultra-barrier films for flat-panel displays. Now PNNL and Vitex are taking a hard second look at solar power.

Solar: A Rich Man Only Renewable Energy?

The very last sentence of this article notes that the “Oregon legislature is currently considering a five-year pilot program to try out the [feed-in tariff] model.”  This is potentially good news but until Oregon and all other states adopt a system where energy can be sold to utility companies at a rate that is high enough to make all sizes of solar installations “profitable”,  like Germany for example, solar will continue to lag behind wind and other renewable energy sources.

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Is Solar Power Only A Rich Man’s Renewable Source?
By Rob Manning – OPB News – June 8, 2009

Turning energy from the sun into electricity is one of the keys to saving the earth, according to renewable power advocates, and if solar is going to take off in the Northwest, it will mean re-shaping our relationship with energy.

Solar energy is considered an intermittent resource, although one of the more predictable ones, since you know it produces electricity only when the sun is up.

And solar is about as renewable as it gets – when the sun comes up, the rays get captured in panels and converted into energy.

Even factoring in the cost of producing the panels, solar energy is several times more efficient than fossil fuels. And unlike wind — which can kill birds — or hydro — which can kill fish — there’s no known collateral damage from solar installations.

But right now, solar doesn’t even register as one of the seven biggest sources of electricity in Oregon.

PV Powered Looks to Double in Size

Future is sunny for PV Powered
With new investment, it’s ready for major growth
By Andrew Moore – The Bulletin – June 05, 2009

Thanks to the extension of a crucial government tax credit and a recent multimillion-dollar investment, Bend’s PV Powered is ramping up for growth that could double or triple the company’s size in the next two years and firmly cement Central Oregon as a center for renewable-energy technology, according to CEO Gregg Patterson.

The privately held company, which manufactures electrical devices called inverters that are a critical component of solar energy systems, has recently hired a handful of workers and is likely to hire as many as 10 more in the coming weeks to handle growing demand for its products, Patterson said.

The company laid off several workers in the fall but is now up to 55 employees, the majority of whom work out of a roughly 100,000-square-foot plant in northeast Bend that used to be a lumber products factory. The company currently uses only a small portion of the facility for its engineering and assembly work but expects to grow into the building as demand dictates.

Solar-Powered Bus Shelters Arrive in San Francisco

San Francisco Unveils First Solar-Powered Bus Shelter
by Megan Treacy – ecogeek.com – June 3, 2009

The first of 1,100 planned solar-powered bus shelters has been unveiled in San Francisco. The other 1,099 will be installed across the city over the next four years.

The roof of the bus shelter is made up of thin-film solar panels embedded in a 40 percent post-industrial recycled polycarbonate material in a rolling wave shape. The structure of the shelter is made of recycled steel and other materials.

The solar roof powers an intercom, LED lighting and wireless routers, so that the bus shelters will become wireless hot spots around the city. The shelters will feed any excess energy generated by the solar panels to the city grid.

Why Can’t Bend be a “Solar City”?

The biggest reason Bend can’t be a “Solar City” is the lack of leadership and vision from the real estate and developer centric political players who effectively control the city (and the Central Oregon counties).  Portland, which has much less average sunlight than Central Oregon, led by its progressive leadership, created a Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, adopted a Solar Now! program and hired a Solar Program Coordinator.

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Clouds Can’t Hold Back Portland’s Solar Expansion
by John Gartner – Matter Network – April 20, 2009

On an unusually warm and sunny April day, Portland Mayor Sam Adams accepted a Solar America Cities Award from the Department of Energy and pledged to greatly expand the amount of solar power in the city.

Portland was one of 25 cities to have earned the Solar City award in 2007-8 which included a matching grant of $200,000 to be used for outreach to consumers about the viability of solar in the often cloudy Northwest, and to work with private companies to produce and sell solar panels. Though the 2009 award, which was handed out at the National League of Cities Green Cities Conference does not guarantee another DOE grant, city officials are hopeful that a similar amount will be made available after the department’s budget is finalized in the next few months.

Mayor Adams, who took office in January, set a goal for the city of expanding the installed solar in the city from the current 2 megawatts to 5 megawatts by 2012, and hopes that the actual number will be around 10 megawatts. Adams said that after factoring in federal and state incentives in Oregon, solar is “getting dangerously to being at a commensurate price for grid power.”

The city is developing co-marketing opportunities with contractors, roofing companies and building inspectors to communicate to consumers that installing a new roof “is an ideal time for installing solar.” The city will also include marketing materials about solar to consumers in communications from the city-operated water and sewer utilities.

Deschutes County Prefers Woody Biomass Over Solar

Solar may be mandated, but officials here push for biomass
By Nick Budnick  – The Bulletin - April 18, 2009

After a key legislative deadline passed on Friday, Deschutes County officials are resorting to some creative politicking in the Capitol to change a state solar power requirement.

In 2007, Gov. Ted Kulongoski signed into law a requirement backed by the solar energy industry that all new public building projects include 1.5 percent of their spending on solar power, such as rooftop panels.

In Deschutes County, however, officials say that money could be better spent on a different alternative energy source dubbed biomass, or as Phil Chang of the Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council puts it, a “community-scale thermal energy project.”

Solar-Powered South Florida City – Why Not Central Oregon?

Coming soon to the Sunshine State: the sunshine city
By Michael Grunwald – Time Magazine – April 9, 2009

An NFL lineman turned visionary developer today is unveiling startlingly ambitious plans for a solar-powered city of tomorrow in southwest Florida’s outback, featuring the world’s largest photovoltaic solar plant, a truly smart power grid, recharging stations for electric vehicles and a variety of other green innovations. The community of Babcock Ranch is designed to break new frontiers in sustainable development, quite a shift for a state that has never been sustainable, and lately hasn’t had much development.

“Some people think I got hit in the head a few too many times,” quips developer Syd Kitson, who spent six years in the trenches for the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys before entering the real estate business in the mid-1980s. “But I still believe deeply in Florida. And the time has come for something completely different.”

To anyone familiar with southern Florida’s planning-nightmare sprawl of golf courses, strip malls and cookie-cutter subdivisions named after the plants and animals they replaced, Kitson’s vision for his solar-powered, smart-growth, live-where-you-work city of 45,000 people east of Fort Myers is breathtakingly different. That’s why the press conference held today revealing his development plans for the historic Babcock Ranch property will feature representatives from the Audubon Society, the World Wildlife Fund and the Sierra Club.

Bend’s PV Powered Gets a Presidential Shout-Out

Obama gives a shout-out to PV Powered
By Keith Chu – The Bulletin – March 24, 2009

In a White House speech on his renewable energy agenda, President Barack Obama listed PV Powered among a handful of innovative renewable energy companies transforming the U.S. economy.

“So these are the stories that are being told all across our country,” Obama said. “I visited … PV Powered, a company developing more reliable solar technology in Bend, Oregon.”

Obama toured the facility last May, as part of a campaign swing. The company makes components for solar-power systems.

PV Powered Vice President Erick Petersen missed Obama’s speech but said he’s as encouraged by the president’s policies as by his speeches. “For me, it’s the president has clearly spoken and said renewable energy is critical, and the money will flow,” Petersen said. “I can’t think of a better pitchman.”

A provision in the stimulus bill to guarantee some loans for renewable energy projects will be particularly helpful, given the dry credit markets of late, he said.

While Petersen is bullish on the company’s outlook for 2009, he said it’s still too soon to know whether that will translate to more jobs at PV Powered.

“We do expect the stimulus plans to have a significant impact on the solar industry in the second half of the year and expect our business to pick up as a result,” Petersen said in an e-mail. “We have been on a reduced work week through this slow period, and after we get back … to a full work week, we will assess the need to hire any new employees early this summer.”