Hansen: Father of solar energy is now grandfather, but still a believer
If Phil Lawes were a superhero, he would be Cyclops, the one who can emit beams of energy from his eyes, like rays of sun.
To his friends and colleagues, Lawes, 67, is like the grandfather of solar energy. Since 1978, he has been the owner and president of Insoltech Solar in Laguna Beach. His tiny company is not Elon Musk’s high-flying SolarCity. It’s not First Solar, which is consistently ranked as one of the largest solar companies in the world.
But none of those companies was around in 1978 — not even close. Back then, it was the time of the solar oven, the energy crisis and bad bell bottoms.
“It definitely had that old hippy thing with Earth Day and things like that,” said Lawes, laughing. “It really started up in Northern California with the pot growers.”
It made sense, Lawes said. The growers needed power, wanted to be off the grid and had money to burn.
When solar started, it was expensive, which is why the government finally subsidized it.
“In 1977-78, solar modules went for around $70 per watt. Now it’s 50 cents a watt,” Lawes said. “And that’s just the manufacturing of the module. It’s not putting the system in or anything, but it shows you the great reduction in the cost of these modules with much improved efficiency. That’s huge.”
Lawes is one of the few who stayed in the solar business because he believed in it.
“I stuck with it,” he said. “I never got out but I still enjoy it, and it’s good to see it finally being adopted. That’s a good feeling.”
Lawes, a resident of Laguna since 1970, when he got out of the Marines after Vietnam, wanted to do something that could help people. Since then, he has installed systems around the world, including actor Johnny Depp’s island system in the Caribbean. But what he’s most proud of is his work with poor Haitians.
“I liked providing a couple small systems for these Haitian fellows for their families because they had no power,” he said. “It’s terrible down there. And that was fun. It’s not lucrative work, but it’s rewarding. These are systems that run refrigerators, lights, fans, things of that nature. That’s kind of the reason I got into this.”
When he was younger, Lawes and his small team would do the whole package: design, planning, paperwork and implementation. Now, with an eye toward retirement, he focuses more on the front-end design.
Nowadays, with the big companies using their scale and deep pockets, everything had become specialized.
“There’s a lot of people getting into it,” he said. “It’s a lot more competitive. So what’s happened is the industry has grown, but the price of systems has come down significantly to where we don’t even need the incentives that were once offered by the California Solar Initiative.”
That initiative started in 2007 with more than $2 billion in rebate money for utility customers to help fund solar projects involving homes, schools, churches and other locations. It was hugely popular and faced funding problems.
“That money has been depleted, but it did what it was supposed to do, and that was to encourage its use,” Lawes said. “We have renewable portfolio standards now that have been adopted by a lot of states. They want to see a certain percentage of power come from renewable resources.”
But the percentage of solar use is still relatively low because of a little thing called oil.
“I think the fossil fuel industry will remain viable for years to come,” Lawes said. “I don’t think it’s going away.”
However, there are clear signs of change, Lawes said. Culturally, there is more awareness that cleaner alternatives are the right path forward.
“You’re starting to see large fossil fuel industries become involved,” he said. “They see the handwriting on the wall. I mean, what’s in the ground is a finite resource.”
Even with the price of natural gas in the U.S. at record lows — thanks in part to the controversial practice of fracking — solar can still compete on price under fair circumstances, Lawes said.
“If I’m not mistaken, the fossil fuel industry has enjoyed tax breaks that have amounted to hundreds of billions of dollars over the last 60 years,” he said. “Solar will have to compete against that.”
He cited a Texas proposal last year that ended in a victory for solar.
“Austin Energy put out an RFP — a request for proposal — for a 600 megawatt plant, and in the pricing they got, solar beat out natural gas and coal. Solar came in at 4 cents per kilowatt hour. Coal was 2 cents more, and natural gas was 2 cents more than that. So it’s becoming competitive.”
Lawes admits there are still challenges with solar, including intermittence, but he’s confident that the technology will continue to get better. It already has, with storage systems using high-capacity lithium ion batteries — something Musk over at SolarCity is working on with his home battery backups.
“You’re going to see more covered parking lots with solar. You’re going to see more schools with solar built in. You’re starting to see more government buildings incorporate solar,” Lawes said. “You’re starting to see more and more of it because it works. It’s nice to see.”
While Lawes is still excited about the industry, the technical advances and even the challenging political battles, he also enjoys watching his grandchildren a couple times a week. His son and daughter-in-law live in Newport Beach.
And his heart increasingly yearns for his own small beach in the Caribbean.
“I like it down there,” he said. “I’ve been doing this quite a while. When I got out of ‘Nam I moved to Laguna. For a young man, it was heaven on Earth. But I’m getting old now.”
If Lawes makes it to the Caribbean and that first hurricane of the season hits, you can bet his hut will still have power.
DAVID HANSEN is a writer and Laguna Beach resident. He can be reached at hansen.dave@gmail.com.
