Chaolysti

A New Threat Looms Against Distributed Rooftop Solar

2014-07-23T21:57:07Z

Net energy metering and solar policies are under attack in several states. Utilities are squaring off with solar grid penetration in several key markets. High profile corporations have levied campaigns against solar energy. The anti-dumping trade case is in full swing. The ITC may expire in 2016. The solar industry is embroiled in all these commendable battles and more. However, a new threat could dwarf these skirmishes.

Zurich Risk Engineering, a division of the well-known global insurance company, released a whitepaper in May, Risk Topics: Photovoltaic Systems outlining their guidance on photovoltaic systems. Their bottom-line recommendation from this short paper:

Avoid the installation or integration of photovoltaic systems onto or into buildings until the challenges and increased risks associated with these systems are fully understood and addressed in applicable codes and standards. As an alternative, locate photovoltaic systems at ground level separated from important buildings and structures.

Much of the guidance from the paper is good design and installation practice like designing to local snow and wind loading requirements, observing proper structural analysis guidelines, and implementing a thorough O&M program. However, calling for an end to roof mounted solar reaches above and beyond risk mitigation when there exist codes, standards, and products on the market today to meet these needs. Zurich’s whitepaper sets a dangerous precedent in an industry that often marches in lockstep.

The quick and nearly industry-wide end of beachfront homeowner’s insurance in much of the Gulf and East Coasts between hurricanes Katrina and Sandy suggests the potential for releases of similar guidance from other insurance underwriters with regard to rooftop solar. Guidance can quickly become exclusions. Exclusions can quickly become the difference between whether an underwriter cancels a policy outright or significantly raises it due to entering a new risk class. For a homeowner or business investigating solar, if this landscape of increased or cancelled insurance now entered the mix this would represent a huge danger for the viability of the distributed solar market. For commercial solar, it would pose the most significant threat.

The insurance industry remains a viable business model by avoiding claims and payouts by mitigating and avoiding risk. Their policies and riders include long lists of exclusions and requirements. Insurance as an industry is more risk-averse than banks. In the solar industry, insurance has so far played a role downstream in defining the costs and categories of worker’s compensation and business insurance. For years, many installation companies paid to cover all the risk of a roofer plus all the risk of an electrician until the solar industry was a big enough client to warrant developing a solar worker classification.

Over the years, a few high profile solar and fire interactions have hit the news like the infamous “Bakersfield” Fire – started by a ground fault in the solar energy system- or the New Jersey Dietz & Watson warehouse fire that caused firefighters to let the whole building lay waste by the flame due to electrical shock risk posed by the 7,000 solar panels on the roof.

In the last few years, solar codes and standards committees have begun responding to increased calls for firefighter protection in the presence of solar energy systems. In the 2014 NEC, section 690.12 defines rapid shutdown as a procedure to aid in safely diffusing the output of solar energy systems and mitigate dangers of continuous solar output that could cause hazards during fire fighting operations by a first responder. Read more about Rapid Shutdown and the 2014 Code in the April/May SolarPro article Understanding the NEC 2014 and Its Impact on PV Systems.

As an industry, solar energy has moved beyond the quaint “alternative energy” moniker. While all solar statistics of jobs and installations numbers have exploded, established industries and business models are perceiving threats, real or imagined, from this growth. Many challenges lay ahead from asset securitization to risk mitigation to new relationships between solar and utilities. As responsible solar professionals, we need to continue to remain vigilant of the climate in the wider business and regulatory environments we currently interface with (or will likely interface with soon) like Insurance, Electrical Inspectors, Union Labor, and increased regulatory pressures from government. Additional pressures and lobbying as these sectors attempt to stake a claim in the growing economy around solar will continue to appear as threats.

That all said, take some of this as good news. Solar is indeed growing up and, like a teenager, asserting its place in the economy as much more than the niche artifact of back-to-the-land movement.

Chaolysti to present Lean Thinking Poster at Solar Power International

2014-07-02T21:52:23Z

The educational committee of Solar Power International has selected Chaolysti to present at its poster exhibition on the topic “Using Lean Thinking and Methodologies to Lower Residential Solar Soft Costs.”

Chaolysti is excited to deepen the appreciation for “continuous improvement” within the solar industry, which has focused on customer acquisition and product/technology evaluation for much of the last decade. Lean is whole-systems improvement concept developed by Toyota’s manufacturing process, where any assembly worker could stop the line to correct process defects and improve the overall process working upstream. Lean thinking and continuous improvement has grown to encompass non-manufacturing process improvement as well.

Chaolysti’s poster will focus on how to identify the non-value-added activities using the conceptual framework of the Seven Forms of Waste and then how to apply that knowledge to process design using the Critical Path Method.

Solar Power International will be held October 20-23, 2014 at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. Expect over 15,000 professionals in solar energy and related fields for four days of the expo, educational sessions and workshops, general sessions and special events.

Join Chaolysti at PV America for a Beers with Peers Session on Project and Personnel Management

2014-06-19T17:57:55Z

Join Principal of Chaolysti, Pamela Cargill, during PV America’s “Beers with Peers” session on Wednesday June 25th from 1PM until 3PM. Ms. Cargill will facilitate the topic, “Best practices roundtable for project and personnel management at your solar company” in keeping with the Lean Thinking theme of her poster presentation. Please join us to discuss best practices (or what hasn’t worked for you!) on the management side of running your solar company: from project management and process management to company culture and personnel management.

As the solar industry continues to mature and focus on soft cost reduction, successful solar installers will need to focus on how their company culture, management styles, process management, and project management tools and policies work together to create customer satisfaction and company sustainability. Techniques and tools common in Lean can provide a framework for long-term sustainability of process change focused toward waste reduction and profitability. In our best practices roundtable, we’ll discuss some of the common problems and also evaluate some of the solutions being used now, whether management and policy tools and/or software/IT solutions. Join us to take a deep dive into how to manage your solar company for long-term growth and profitability.

Chaolysti “7 Forms of Waste” selected for Best Posters of PV America

2014-06-04T16:27:45Z

Chaolysti is proud to receive the distinction of Best Posters of PV America (PVA) with the poster “Using 7 Forms of Waste and Critical Path Method to Lower Operational Soft Costs in Residential Solar.” Please join Principal Pamela Cargill as she delivers a 10 minute presentation on the poster contents at the Solar Central Booth (#245) at 3PM on June 24th at PV America in Boston, MA.

Best posters of PV America distinguishes up to five top posters. Industry experts judged posters on several criteria including covering appropriate amount of information at an appropriate depth, supporting results by objective data and arriving at reasonable conclusions, visual appeal, use of graphics and figures, and logical flow.

Chaolysti is proud to share principles of Lean Thinking with the community of solar installers and industry pros in support of sharing techniques and methodologies to lower solar soft costs. Please join us and your peers at PV America to learn more. A formal poster reception will follow at 4:30PM on June 24th to allow for deeper conversation and questions on poster content.

People and Process: Why Respect for People is not an optional part of Lean Thinking

2014-06-03T22:00:19Z

At the core of Lean are the Three Pillars: Increase Value, Remove Waste, and Respect People. I’ve written at length about the many ways to create value (Scalable Design Services, Stock/Custom Design Strategies) and remove waste (Value-Added/Non-Value-Added, 7 Forms of Waste, etc). However, Respect People is crucial to the success of Lean thinking. Without respecting the expertise of employees who perform the work every day, you will likely overlook your most fertile source of the most practical and ready-to-implement improvement suggestions.

In his recent GreenBiz piece “What can sustainability pros learn from Toyota’s ‘lean’ process?” VP of Haley & Aldrich Ben Chandler offers that

By engaging people in the process of problem solving, it reduces resistance to the recommended solutions. Rather, participants want to see their ideas implemented and be successful because they are their ideas. Lean is inclusive; it is not done to people, it is done by people who feel empowered to create value.”

However, the solar industry is a young industry, mostly populated with small or start-up companies. Many perceive Lean thinking as a luxury only afforded by large companies. Whether your company size is two or two-thousand, if your people are a key pillar, are you spending time and energy developing them, listening to their suggestions, and empowering them to bring ideas forward? Or are you managing by the numbers from a safe distance? Lean thinking rejects the latter philosophy. It encourages management to engage with employees and process flow where the work is done. This is the “gemba attitude” that pushes us to Go And See. It’s easy to fall into the trap of seeing numbers that need control. Do those numbers correspond to actual value creation?

In my recent discussion with Roger Willhite, host of the Disruption: Solar Energy podcast, I described on-boarding into off-grid solar of the late 90s/early 2000s like a guild system, like learning a martial art or a trade. You studied with a “master” as an “apprentice,” became a “journeyman,” and eventually became a “master” yourself and taught others. In many cases, as you began your career in solar and landed your first solar job, you spent most of your time figuring things out for yourself. Maybe you were the first installer or the first office manager, so you had to develop systems and processes and deal with situations with only your good judgment to serve you as they came up. Perhaps you had to navigate many of these situations alone.

If this sounds familiar, maybe you were the “latchkey” solar employee at some point, too. This is not unique to the solar industry. Small businesses all over the country in all kinds of industries are struggling to get by and get the job done with very little focus on company culture and personnel development. Lean thinking compels us to rethink this philosophy. A company where people matter most is a company where people can adopt and drive Lean thinking. It’s a culture that focuses on creating value, not repeating a series of steps in an information silo over and over.

The residential solar sector needs to focus on creating value. Redundant internal checks and QAs, onerous approval processes, and other systems setup out of distrust that pit one employee division against another erode value and erode respect. Employees who cannot see the value their company creates and how they fit into that puzzle will never think Lean and never drive value-creating initiatives. The ones who try and gain no traction will leave. Talent will bleed until those satisfied with the status quo remain. Is that the company you want to lead?

Consider how you can create a Lean thinking culture, no matter what size your company. You may have to look around immediately and make hard decisions about whether or not you have the right people in the right roles to foster this. Having the right talent with the right attitude goes the distance. You can never teach drive and passion. You can always teach skills.

So ask yourself, are you fostering a culture of Lean thinking, where you respect your people and the expertise that comes from the work they perform every day? Can you leverage this to create lasting value in your company and drive out waste?

Tools for Analyzing Soft Cost Reductions Part 2: 7 Forms of Waste

2014-05-20T15:29:53Z

The 7 Forms of Waste is a framework used in proven cost reduction methodologies from the Toyota Production System (TPS), now commonly referred to as “Lean Production” or simply Lean. Using this framework, you can begin to reframe your operations in the language of what your customer considers valuable. By classifying all process activities into these two categories of “value added” and “non value-added” activities, you can begin to take action improving valuable parts and removing or reducing non value-added waste.

7 Forms of Waste and Common Residential Solar Examples

Now that you understand how to identify your internal and external customers and know how to identify value-added and non value-added activities, let’s look at the 7 Forms of Waste: What they are, what they means, and an example of each one so you can learn how to see them in your own company.

Transport

The unnecessary motion or movement of materials or information, including work-in-process, from one operation to another. This adds time to the process during which no one adds value.

Example:Ordering from a vendor that cannot drop ship directly to the customer site or to your warehouse, hence product must move through several channels, adding time and potential for loss or damage in the process which could further delay the project.

Inventory

This refers to inventory that is not directly required to fulfill current Customer orders. Inventory includes raw materials, work-in-process and finished goods. Inventory all requires additional handling and space. Inventory is often closely associated with Waiting and Over-Production.

Example: Ordering more rails, mid-clamps, and wire than is necessary for the amount of projects currently in progress and run rate of equipment. This thinking compounds and causes company capital to become tied up unavailable for other uses and causes warehousing space to become crowded which can lead to demand to expand.

Motion

Built-in extra steps taken by employees to accommodate inefficient process, rework, reprocessing, overproduction or excess inventory.

Example: Developing and automating queues for plan set rework instead of reducing or eliminating the need for rework.

Waiting

This refers to downstream inactivity that occurs because previous activities are not delivered on time. Idle downstream resources are then often used in activities that either don’t add value or result in overproduction.

Example: Installers cannot perform installations because plan sets are not completed fast enough to pull permits and schedule jobs. These installers are then sent out on site evaluations or given warehouse “housekeeping” tasks.

Over-Production

Overproduction occurs when an operation continues after it should have stopped.

Example: Plan set is “overproduced” — it includes additional sheets, viewports, and data points above and beyond what the AHJ or Utility needs to approve the permit or installer needs to build the project.

Over-Processing

This occurs any time employees put more work on a project than required to satisfy the customer. This also includes using components that are more precise, higher quality, or expensive than absolutely required.

Example: A designer spends extra time on a project researching and specifying a non-standard piece of equipment deemed necessary due to site conditions that the customer did not pay extra money for.

Defects

This refers to products or services not conforming to the company’s internal specification or expectation of internal or that of the final Customer thus leading to Customer dissatisfaction.

Example: AHJ redlines and rejects a plan set because design did not follow a local municipal code unknown to or forgotten by the designer. The designer cannot work on a new plans and must now research the issue and schedule rework of old plan set.

Now that you understand how to see the 7 Forms of Waste, you can begin to categorize activities. In our next post, we will build on this understanding to cover the next step in process improvement: mapping your process using the Critical Path Method.

Tools for Analyzing Soft Cost Reductions Part 1: Value-Added vs. Non-Value-Added

2014-05-06T00:02:16Z

Soft costs. While analysts have been long on talk analyzing what they are and how they are impacting the industry, they have been short on solutions. Why? Because residential solar is, by nature of its need to interface with a varied landscape of regulatory and policy issues, a complex business. It is equal parts finance, construction, and high-tech. Since there is no common formula to apply to reduce soft costs nor a single soft cost category that should be universally tackled first by all companies, installers should use a more individualized approach to evaluate their project delivery process for cost reduction areas. This is the first part of a three-part series on analyzing your business using tools and techniques from Lean.

Who is the Customer?

In order to begin categorizing waste activities, employees must identify and understand their internal customers and the final customer. These relationships are key to meeting customer expectations. For example, design staff drafting plan sets must meet the needs of the AHJ, Utility, installers, and the final customer. Without seeing the AHJ, Utility, and installers as customers of their product, the designer could overlook important safety or design requirements in order to meet a customer-specified design constraint, which could cause rework and delays if in conflict with AHJ or Utility requirements or real-world installation practices. When each employee frames the recipient of their work as a customer, they are more likely to see how their activities could be value-added or non-value added. When framed in this way, management can also work more intelligently together to streamline handoffs and minimize or remove re-work related to misalignment of goals.

What Defines “Non Value-Added?”

A value-added process is an activity that a customer is willing to pay for that contributes to the end product they expect. Non value-added processes, on the other hand, fall into two categories – business requirements and pure waste. Business requirements comprise the overhead of the company: your fleet of vehicles, HR activities, compliance-related activities (especially if you deal with finance or credit). Examples of pure waste are excessive coordination meetings, generating reports that are not read or acted upon, multiple layers of approval, and any kind of rework.

One can categorize and learn to see Non Value-Added activities by understanding the 7 Forms of Waste, which we will explore in greater detail in our next segment.

Chaolysti Founder, Pamela Cargill, appears on Disruption! Solar Energy Podcast

2014-05-05T17:36:16Z

Founder of Chaolysti, Pamela Cargill, spoke recently with Roger Willhite of SecondSilicon.com and host of the podcast Disruption! Solar Energy for episode #31.

The interview covered:

Developing solar career paths: from formal education to solar training to the employment landscape.
Bay Area Solar Culture: How the vestiges of DotCom tech culture shaped the Bay Area solar industry and how attitudes and housing competitiveness make it challenging to live in the Bay Area.
The East Coast solar market landscape: An overview of the fragmented markets and cultural attitudes in New England and colonial history that shaped it.
Chaolysti: What it is, who it serves, and what it wants to become in the future.
The future of Third Party Ownership: Will it continue to dominate?
The future of the solar industry: Will business models or technology innovations propel us forward?

You can listen in to these answers and much more here.

The Solar Cell Turns 60: Celebrating History and the Future

2014-07-15T23:35:53Z

“It was the solar cell that launched the renewable energy age,” declared Eicke Weber, director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, as he kicked off “PV60: History Becoming the Future.” The program, honoring the history of the invention of the silicon solar cell, took place April 18 at the Lucie Stern Community Center in the solar-friendly city of Palo Alto and was organized by the nonprofit Renewables 100 Policy Institute.

The audience, primarily composed of industry professionals and researchers, laughed and smiled along with stories told by solar pioneers Morton Prince, coinventor of the commercial solar cell, and Eugene Ralph, developer of the first space and terrestrial applications of the solar cell.

Mort Prince displays the original Bell solar battery

Prince shared the “Eureka” moment with the audience, a testament to being in the right place at the right time. Colleague Gerald Pearson had run out into the hallway as Prince was passing by and stopped him to share the news. Fuller had just witnessed that the silicon-based transistor produced a current when exposed to sunlight. Where solar cell experiments had used selenium up until that time, the Bell Labs team had serendipitously found a cheaper alternative. “Everything happens in the hallways,” Prince reminisced with a smile.

For Ralph, the future could not come fast enough. His papers from the 1950s and onward heralded a solar future that is just beginning to unfold as costs have decreased tremendously over the past 15 years: residential solar rolls out on a massive scale, utility-scale solar projects sprout up, and other new markets take off. Although he was honored to be among the solar pioneers, Ralph humbly gave recognition to where the technology and industry were heading, remarking, “It was a team effort, but now it’s an army.”

I spoke with Ralph after the program. He shared his grand vision for the solar applications of the future, where massive solar power stations in space send clean, renewable power down to Earth unencumbered by soiling, ambient temperature, distributed generation policies, and the host of other terrestrial design concerns.

Ralph had hoped to see this transformation sooner, but his predictions only missed the mark by a decade or so. He bemoaned the fact, noting that during the Nixon administration, he predicted cost-effective solar-powered independence would be possible through government support by the year 2000. He and other attendees and speakers shared the common theme of how policy has driven the development of solar industry since the very beginning, starting with how the government funded Atoms for Peace handsomely while “Solar for Peace” received a mere pittance.

Ralph delivered words of wisdom; truly, the solar industry continues to be a prisoner of policy issues as the question of whether the ITC will remain unchanged, be altered, or be eliminated entirely hangs in the balance. Even with the advances in manufacturing processes and material science, policy still holds solar back from its true potential to, as the evening’s moderator John Perlin (solar historian and author of Let it Shine: The 6000-Year History of Solar Energy) eloquently put it, “safely put the nuclear reactor 93 million miles away.”

Contrasting the solar generation formed by the discovery of the solar cell and the space race to the solar industry pros of today reveals a narrative running in the same vein: a desire to do something memorable and amazing to better the world. After the program, Prince advised the young up-and-coming entrants to the solar field to “do something good for the planet” in their career.

We are perilously close to losing track of the oral history of the solar industry and the perspective of the policy battles and regulatory hurdles we have jumped over to get this far. Perlin has spent countless hours reviewing archives in the United States, Germany, China and elsewhere to put together his exhaustive book on the history of applied solar energy. The connection between the history and stories is not common to the context of the post-net-metering solar industry–a world often defined by finance terms and economic models.

Solar must not lose the essential connection to its soul: a product with more potential for powering a society peacefully than any other extractive fuel source. Although the mechanisms and tools provided through finance and economics have helped propel solar into its current arc of success, the desire of the young generations to engage in careers with positive social impact will ensure solar remains one of the planet’s best energy options for the future.

Where Just a Little PV Goes a Long Way: GRID Alternatives in Nicaragua

2014-04-14T22:01:04Z

I recently returned from a week-long trip with GRID Alternatives’ International Program, where my husband (Marvin Hamon, also a solar pro) and I joined a group of ten intrepid travelers to install a 1.38kW PV system. The installation took place in the rural subsistence fishing community of Charco Muerto on the shore of Lake Nicaragua not far from the colonial city of Granada. Working on a small off-grid system and living in the community not only brought me full-circle to my first solar design and installation projects but engaged my thinking on access to opportunity, as Nicaragua is one of the poorest nations in South America and the world.

The people we met in the Charco Muerto community were incredibly kind, patient, and generous. Though I was initially concerned that my rudimentary Spanish language skills would pose a major problem, I found that with a little help and some creative charades, I was able to communicate on a basic level and still pick up a lot. Unlike solar projects in the US, the pace and style of the project differed significantly. We started to get on “Nica time” a slower, less-concerned-with-exact-time equatorial pace-of-life concept trip leader Carla Estrada introduced to us early in our travels. For micromanage-to-the-minute types, putting away the smartphones and lowering expectations about timeliness and exactitude is a requirement for successful enjoyment of either equatorial or island travel since even in the winter dry season, temperatures exceeded 95 degrees during the mid-day and beg for “siesta.” With many hands to work on the system, this afforded groups of us time to relax together and talk with community members while working at a slower pace.

Local families involved in the community’s energy committee, the group that would maintain the PV system post-installation the volunteers, hosted us volunteers in their lakefront homes. This led to perhaps the most challenging part of the trip for many volunteers; adjusting to the chickens underfoot, highly sweetened juices and coffee (which we jokingly called “azucar con cafe” – sugar with coffee), the starchy diet (beans, rice, plantain), and the lively night sounds of insects and frogs, waves lapping on the lakeshore, and dogs barking. After a restless first night, I resorted to earplugs, myself.

Me, explaining the flow of DC/AC electricity to other volunteers

After working in grid-tied solar for the longer part of my solar career, the impact of the project was still a shocking reminder of how energy intensive households and lifestyles are in developed countries. Where 5kW, 7kW, and 10kW systems can often only put a small dent in the electrical bill of an American homeowner, the impact of a comparably tiny off-grid system in a community with minimal infrastructure was stunning. With just a few lights and outlets, the entire educational infrastructure of the community could expand, including the addition of learning opportunities for the community adults, who we discovered had a significant range in educational levels and reading comprehension.

The solar pros who work with GRID in Nicaragua, Suni Solar, are a three-man team fully capable of installing the system themselves in less than three days, but provided necessary oversight for the volunteer group. Their guidance, patience, and also willingness to learn provided the critical lynchpin between the two cultural communities coming together to achieve the project. See a photoset from the installation.

As an outsider, especially visiting for only a week and lacking significant language comprehension, it’s challenging to understand the complexities of cultural attitudes toward community, opportunity, and contentment with life. It’s too easy to project conventionally American understandings of a situation onto others who live different lifestyles or paint broad brushstrokes of “noble savages” in subsistence communities. We were visitors in a different place and we all came to accept that there were things that would not make sense or translate.

Perhaps the greatest takeaway from the trip was the understanding that small, volunteered efforts on a human scale make all the difference in opening up opportunity for others, but the recipient of the gift is in charge of integrating it into their cultural context and translating it into a relevant experience on their terms.