How else to explain to very mobile settings that served as the backdrop for a recent series of conversations that make up the story that follows?
Rather like a fan chasing The Beatles in the 60’s classic A Hard Day’s Night, it takes some diligence to catch up with the ever-affable Wheatley, but when does, persistence is definitely rewarded.
Over the course of a two-week period, we catch up with Envision Solar’s President and CEO on the fringes of press conference, aboard a commercial airline flight and – via hand’s free mobile – behind the wheel of his car as he drives in Southern California.
One reason for the flurry of activity on Wheatley’s schedule is the unveiling of the company’s “solar trees” at General Motors’ Tech facility in Warren, Michigan. The event, which was held just before the Thanksgiving holiday in the US, effectively placed the cherry on top of the sundae that was the six year old company’s first full year of commercial activity, while also setting the stage for what already appears will be a very promising – and active – 2012.
GM is poised to unveil its all-electric Cadillac luxury car, which will go on sale in 2013. In anticipation of that market introduction, Envision Solar will spend much of 2012 installing its solar trees at Cadillac dealerships across the US.
As Wheatley reveals below, the company is also actively pursing opportunities in the Middle East, while continuing to market its esthetically pleasing, high tech “trees” -- “we don’t do structures, we do machines,” the CEO explains at one point – to developers of green corporate campuses and mainstream commercial real estate.
The solar tree installed at the GM facility is the first of the Envision Solar’s new generation of “tracking” solar projects and the result of five years of intensive R&D work.
Earlier iterations of the technology have been deployed at Dell Computer’s headquarters in Round Rock, Texas; the headquarters of Centocor, a Johnson & Johnson company, in Horsham, Pennsylvania; a BMW dealership in Mountain View, California; in various locations on the University of California’s San Diego campus, and in the City of Napa, California, to name a few locations.
The tracking solar tree array at the GM facility features a multiple axis design -- Envision Solar's EnvisionTrakT multi-axis solar tracking technology -- that allows the whole canopy to track and shift to where the sun moves so it can absorb the most energy. As it does so, it shades six standard parking spaces and generates enough emissions-free electricity to fully charge six electric vehicles per day.
The tracking and performance of each array is monitored from Envision Solar’s San Diego headquarters, and the system is marketed as integrate, turn-key solution to potential customers.
A single solar tree costs about $150,000, before factoring in incentives, depreciation credits and the like. The price scales down for volume sales, with the ultimate price per tree heavily dependant on project and local conditions.
The company also offers a smaller, “solar socket” which shades a single parking space and can be used to charge a single vehicle per day.
Each system supports a variety of charging modules, and fits easily in existing structures or newly built ones, the company says.
We first speak with Wheatley at the conclusion of the GM event, as the array – with the help of the Envision Solar team participating from California – gracefully moves along its tracking course as six Chevrolet Volts charged underneath.
Nearby, James Fouts, Mayor of Warren, Mich., and Gm officials including Tony Posawatz, head of the US automotive giant’s global electric vehicles program, watched with palpable excitement as the 35-foot by 35-foot, six ton array silently tracked the course of the sun across the sky.
“Of course, it won’t move this ‘quickly’ in actual operation,” Wheatley says with a chuckle. “We’ve sped it up for the event, so the people here can get a better sense of the tree’s movement. Ideally, if it’s tracking the sun as it is designed to do, the movement of a tracking array should be kind of boring, and largely imperceptible.
“You know, it’s a case of, ‘you look at it, look away, and then 20 minutes later you look again and this whole massive structure has changed its position,’” he adds. “That’s exciting. But to just look at it like we are right now, that would be – and should be – a little boring.”
It quickly becomes apparent that as much as he loves the “show businessy” aspects of the event, art and practicality are one when it comes to both Envision Solar and its CEO.
“We want these trees to last,” he says. “We’re building them to last 30 to 50 years, and frankly, the more boring its actual operation, the more likely it is to do that.”
With that, Wheatley is on to discussing other practical matters, such as the need to create an array that moves without impeding traffic lanes.
“In a parking situation you need to deploy a technology that tracks the sun without impeding the movement of users, the fire department or other emergency service providers,” he says. “If you don’t, building departments tend to object and that becomes an impediment to deployment.”
Nodding toward the Chevy Volts, Wheatley then goes on to describe what he calls the “serendipity” of the solar tree’s design.
“Charging the batteries is what the technology is all about, but one of the really beautiful things about the design is the low-tech part of this solution – the shading,” he says. “Interestingly enough, it turns out that when electric vehicles are plugged into a source of energy, they use as much 80 percent of that energy just to cool their batteries and get them down to the nominal temperature for charging.
“This design, just by virtue of its defending the vehicle from the radiant energy of the sun, cuts about 100 degrees of interior temperature from the car,” Wheatley adds.
Even at high speed, the sweep of the solar array is barely perceptible to the eye. Still, as Wheatley speaks, several of those in the crowd stand with hands clasped and wearing expressions that seem to shout, “Look! It’s moving! It’s moving!”
A foundational esthetic
To truly “get’ the technology, one first needs to know a little history. Envision Solar was founded in 2006 by Robert Noble, AIA, LEED AP, the Harvard-trained environmental architect, who got involved with solar power, in part, because he believed in the technology and also believed that to gain adoption, it needed to be wed to beautiful and iconic design.
“Robert is still our chairman and we’re lucky to have him,” Wheatley says during a subsequent conversation after he boards a plane for New York.
“He’s spent the past decade putting his considerable intellect and talent into the idea of coming up with architecturally accretive ways of rolling sustainable infrastructure into our built environment,” he continues, furtively trying to satisfy a reporter’s request for additional information in the few moments before a flight attendant insists he turn off his phone.
“I think one thing that needs to be recognized by people who promote or advocate for renewable energy is just how important it is to effectively integrate it into the fabric of our built environment,” Wheatley says.
“I mean, I was recently invited to speak before the Solar Electric Power Association and San Diego Gas & Electric, and at the outset I asked for a show of hands on how many people in the room believed that distributed generation is going to play a major role in the future energy mix. Everyone raised their hands,” he says.
“Then I asked how many believed solar was going to play a major role in the future of distributed generation, and again, every hand in the room went up,” Wheatley continues. “Now, the only way that that premise comes true, the only way we are going to see mainstream adoption of distributed generation is if we treat it in the same way we treat any other element of the built environment, which means it needs to be well-architected. Otherwise, people just won’t accept it.
“If you look at our customers, GM, or, the major governmental agency that we are currently working with in the US, it’s no longer good enough to produce or to pretend to produce cheap electricity for them,” he says.
“Your solution now has to also demonstrably be of a very high quality. You have to be able to demonstrate that the thing will in fact produce 25 to 30 years down the road, which is sadly not the case with many of the solar deployments being put in the ground today. Many of the solar deployments we see today are being driven by cost and nothing else.
“The other thing is, the renewables-based solution you offer people has to be demonstrably improving the built environment,” he says. “Our system, shading the parking area, does that – and you can’t just do that by throwing up any old structure. In our case, people find the solar tree pleasing beyond the fact that it is shading their cars.”
A week later, Wheatley returns to the subject while driving in Los Angeles.
“A really important takeaway from our earlier discussion is that Envision Solar’s array is designed to be architecturally accretive,” he says. “We believe that if there is going to be real, mainstream adoption of distributed solar generation and electric vehicle charging, that it’s going to have to happen in a way that’s not just acceptable to early adopters – for whom, oftentimes, it seems the uglier the technology the better – on the contrary, it’s going to have to be done in a way that’s acceptable to green corporate campuses and mainstream corporate real estate.
“And what we know about all of those people, no matter what they do for a living, they spend money on architecture and landscaping and generally, sort of making the place look better,” Wheatley says. “I think it’s been a bad thing for the solar industry so far that we have ignored that, and thought, somehow, that it’s solar, it doesn’t matter if it is ugly. Well, it actually matters a lot.”
“What we do is strive to ensure that this renewable energy generation is done in a way that is not just acceptable, bit also very, very popular with the quality commercial real estate and quality corporate campus environment,” he continues. “In the case of GM, for instance, above and beyond making a very visible statement about their commitment to the environment and renewable energy, they’re also interested in beautifying their dealerships.”
“The solar tree structure is an aesthetically pleasing way to make a green statement to their customers and employees with a highly visible solar technology,” he says.
A bright future
Prior to joining Envision Solar, Wheatley spent two decades in senior management positions and engaged in the deployment of large infrastructure project. During these years, he was actively engaged in wireless communications, energy management and security infrastructure in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Among the highlights on his resume is his serving for CEO of iAxis, a systems integration and alternative energy company based in Dubai.
Previously engaged in M&A activities, Wheatley evaluated acquisition opportunities, conducted due diligence and raised commitment of $500 million in debt and equity.
In talking about the American market in which he’s now deeply engaged, Wheatley refers to Winston Churchill’s famous assessment that “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing… after they have exhausted all other possibilities.”
“I think that’s true, and I’m afraid that’s sort of where we are with energy,” he says. “I am very confident that America will end up doing the right thing; I just hope that it doesn’t wait until it has exhausted all of the other possibilities.”
“We view America as sort of this sleeping giant as far as renewable energy is concerned… and that’s fine, but we need to awaken it,” he adds.
Wheatley hopes GM’s commitment to renewables will help do just that.
“It’s great that we are seeing so much leadership from an American car manufacturer,” he says. “It’s been very important to us that this be an American initiative. The thing is, and I know it sounds odd to say this, but I think renewable energy initiatives are very important where economic competitiveness is concerned. It becomes a patriotic thing, frankly.
“I mean, there’s hardly anything more patriotic that you can do than to help America become energy independent and get energy security, get off oil, and get off carbon fuels,” Wheatley says.
“I say, let’s make sure we don’t wake up in 20 years time and find that some of our competitors, really notable competitors. On the other side of the Pacific, leave us in the dust when it comes to renewables,” he says. “It would be terrible is they were completely beyond fossil fuels and we were still trying to figure out how to pay ever-increasing prices for our carbon-based energy economy. That would be a terrible, terrible thing, not just for America, but frankly for the world.”
Commenting specifically on Envision Solar’s future, Wheatley says he believes 2012 will be a time of “really significant growth” for the company.
“We have narrowed down and focused on a couple of products which are really resonating – our solar tree and solar socket – and looking at our current order book, it’s clear we are already poised to have by far our best year in the company’s history. We’ve had and will continue to have massive growth, by anyone’s reckoning – and it won’t be just through our association with General Motors.”
“We’re building a project for a utility right now, and as you know, while utilities are slow to act, once they do act, they act a lot; the same is true of our current government contract. Again, it is an entity, which I’m not at liberty to reveal, which is historically slow to act, but once it does, it does so with gusto,” he says.
“In short, in each of these areas, we’re working to get the most bang for the buck in single signature, multiple execution type environments,” Wheatley says. “You won’t see us in the residential arena or sort of picking away at any one-off commercial operations – unless they come to us.
“We’re also seeing a significant amount of interest from overseas, particularly from the Middle East, which is not surprising given that they have many of the things that you need to make a solar deployment work – plenty of available real estate, cash and an abundance of sunshine,” he continues. “They also have an impetus – they recognize that their hydrocarbons will eventually come to an end, and they are already asking, ‘What becomes of us then?”
Wheatley says that during a recent trip to New York he had an exciting discussion about all this with “senior people from Saudi Arabia”.
“The idea we talk about was Saudi Arabia remaining a net exporter of energy even after the oil runs out,” he says. “At the same time, they also have extraordinary energy needs of their own. If you think about it, given their geography, their population, and their need to sustain their economy in the future, Saudi Arabia is a country tat needs to be covered in solar and quickly.”
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