Four critical lessons from Australia’s world-leading solar industry pioneers

I don’t know about you, but although I’m in my mid-fifties, inside my head I still feel like I’m in my twenties.

With this in mind, the prospect of getting together with around 100 solar veterans for the second “Solar Pioneers” celebration was approached with a mix of excitement and trepidation.

I fight the urge to talk about aging bones, the good old days and other signs of age in my never-ending self-denial, but I as I should have known, getting together with people who have literally changed the world was incredibly inspiring and rekindling old friendships was truly heart-warming.

Most importantly, I was reminded how much we can all learn from the experiences of the past. No matter what solar discipline our veterans specialised in, newer entrants to the solar industry can benefit from the lessons and mistakes we have made along the way – what an opportunity for mentoring!

You can read a detailed history of the solar industry see more than 250 pioneers biographies and lots more here in the SWC50 “Century of Solar” book.

The first Solar Pioneers event was held five years ago to celebrate and remember the formative days of solar in Australia and required you to show 25 years of service in solar.

Last Friday night’s event was an opportunity for the next generation to join in with a lot of new faces as well as the familiar ones from the last event. The attendees included manufacturers, installers, small business owners, marketing/sales people and academics/ researchers. All these people, and many others not in attendance helped develop the solar industry in Australia that thousands work in today

Some of Australia’s earliest Solar Pioneers have histories dating back into the 1970s, with John Paton, founder of solar retailer Solar Charge, holding the record for the longest PV solar career in Australia, although closely followed by a huge tranche of others.

There was memorabilia, ancient inventions and a number of speeches to set the scene, all organised by GSES’s Geoff Stapelton a true stalwart of our industry and MC’d by Ergon Energy’s Michelle Taylor who has been at the centre of solar and renewables work for more than 25 years.

Not all those in attendance were in the industry in 1997. Johann Fleury from Solar Cutters had been invited so that the new generation could gain an insight on what was happening last century.

In the last five years the industry lost a number of people who had been instrumental in the development of this industry. Two of these were Stuart Watkinson founder of the MPPT manufacturer AERL and Professor Stuart Wenham from the UNSW. Peter Watkinson and Alison Ciesla (nee Wenham) were invited to attend to represent their respective fathers.

Some key facts from that year were:

• Total PV installed in Australia was 3MWp bringing the cumulative total to 18.7MWp.  97% of the cumulative total was off-grid – this has changed dramatically today;
• Total PV installed world-wide was 65MWp bringing the cumulative total to 304MWp.  Globally,1997 was the year grid connect installations overtook off-grid and it has stayed this way ever since;
• There were two Australian PV Manufacturers, two companies doing R&D planning manufacturing plants and eight inverter manufacturers.
• The industry was worth about $91.5 million per year and there were approximately 840 in the industry, 50% of these were in manufacturing.
• Module prices were around $8/Wp,
• Grid system prices $10-12/Wp
• Off-grid system prices $20-40/Wp.

On the surface, reminiscing about the good old days might seem a bit tedious, but everyone who spoke did a fantastic job of highlighting how these lessons were the foundations of our industry today but also acknowledged that we are now learning from the next generations of the solar industry.

I won’t recount all of them, but have dropped some raw video here if you would like to celebrate the details and below are a few highlights of the things you can learn from our very own solar pioneers.

Lesson number 1 – Australia is incredibly influential

Most salient of all was a speech by Dr Martin Green who started in solar in 1974 and explained how Australia’s scientists and researchers played an absolutely seminal role in almost every part of creating the global solar industry that we enjoy today.

“Recently, we passed the incredible milestone of 1 Terawatt of installed solar and 1 Petawatt of generation on planet earth. Almost 50% of that uses PERC technology, developed right here in Australia,” he said.

Going back in time, he also described how one of his early graduate students, Dr Stuart Wenham (who has sadly passed away in recent years) combined an ancient gaming computer and a Macintosh computer to get a second-hand quantronics laser cutter to work (funded by NASA), kicking off some of the first experiments and technological evolution in laser etching solar cells which resulted in over $1 billion dollars in sales and made it one of the most successful inventions in Australia’s history.

And how Dr Zhengrong Shi, another former student, was the first Australian educated Chinese graduate to set up a non-government owned solar manufacturing facility in China, raised a record-setting amount of capital on the NY stock exchange and went on to form Suntech energy.

Lesson number 2 – We have a long history of manufacturing

We have a long history of PV manufacturing from the very early days of the industry (Tideland Energy, Solarex, BP Solar and Tindo) and also a number of regulator and inverter manufacturers including Selectronic who are more than 50 years old and Latronics who just celebrated 40 years of manufacturing.

In this vein, we also heard from quintessentially colourful and quiet achiever, Klaus Langner who formed Australian inverter company Latronics 37 years ago. Although they may be a small name in inverters today, they continue to build inverters from their 100% solar powered factory in Queensland, specialising in simple, robust and reliable products 80% of which are exported to developing countries.

We also heard from Ken Scott and Lindsay Hart from Melbourne-based inverter manufacturer Selectronic, who have been making electronics and inverters for an incredible 50 years. Ken and Lindsay regaled us with many stories about how they stumbled into the need for inverters and have gone on to be one of the world’s most highly regarding inverter manufacturers, particularly in the off-grid sector.

Lesson 3 – Australian solar retailers know their stuff

Australia has around 6000 solar retailers today, in almost every form imaginable.

Thirty years ago, however, there were around 20 companies and at that time they serviced an exclusively off-grid market. A number of retailers, sales and marketing folks were present but a special mention was made of the Rainbow Power Company, one of the true pioneers of the industry.

Founder David Christmas was on hand to celebrate, but in typical unassuming style, refused the spot light preferring to tell his story in writing and quiet chats. Such was their impact however, Lindsay Hart and yours truly rushed the stage to discuss the impact Rainbow Power Company had.

My very first foray into solar was courtesy of Rainbow Power Company who graciously hired me in 1992 and where I was taught everything about renewable energy for five wonderful years. Amongst many stories, I recounted a significant moment in the company’s history:

“We had applied for and received a very significant grant from the Sustainable Energy Development Authority to help us expand our capabilities in many ways. We bought a very high tech TIG welder to manufacturer our Micro Hydro’s and multiple brands and types of PV modules which were installed as a comparison system, resplendent with a SCADA system. The PV was coupled with a wind turbine, a lead acid battery bank and three Trace inverters which was all connected to the grid in what was the very first three phase grid connected solar system in Australia. I think we got 1c kWh for our exports.”

Companies like these laid the foundations of solar retailing in Australia and their living, working renewable powered factory was one of the first.

Lesson 4 –The next generation is listening

A particular effort was made to welcome the next generation of solar pioneers and ensure that our history isn’t lost.

Johann Fleury was on hand and talked about his experience taking over his father’s electrical business and transitioning into solar. He also talked about the huge online community of “Solar Cutters”, a group of installers and retailers dedicated to supporting each other and maintaining high standards in the industry.

Where we might have relied on printed fanzines, small meetings, and personal relationships with key people in the past, Solar Cutters personifies the switch to digital communications with 24hour global reach.

Whilst some things have changed dramatically, the underlying culture of building strong relationships, learning from and supporting each other is as strong as ever.

Solar Pioneers

I know I have left a huge number of important, dynamic and valuable people out, so to all those other pioneers I humbly apologise. The evening was sponsored by Selectronic, Latronics, RFI, AERL and GSES. The criteria for sponsorship were that the company had to be operating today and was around in 1997.

The list of attendees who made it to our event is below (noting we had many online and numerous apologies). This is not an exhaustive list of all Australian Solar Pioneers but gives you a sense of the experience in the room.

First Name	Last Name	Year Started Working in Solar
Martin	Green	1970
Judy	Green	1970
Luke	Williams	1973
Ravinder	Soin	1974
Nick	Wardrop	1974
Trevor	Lee	1975
David	Mills	1975
Brian	England	1976
Ken	Brown	1980
Michael	Hamlyn-Harris	1980
Lindsay	Hart	1980
David	Bartley	1981
Steve	Jaques	1981
Paula	Cooper	1983
John	Cooper	1983
Ernest	Gavey	1983
Rick	Potter	1983
Heather	Watson	1983
Stuart	Watson	1983
Barbara	Goulter	1984
Dave	Christmas	1985
Tony	Egan	1985
Klaus	Langner	1985
Steve	Nusco	1985
Dennis	Pont	1985
Alistair	Sproul	1985
Sylvia	Tulloch	1985
Gavin	Tulloch	1985
Philip	Wilson	1985
Ken	Scott	1986
David	Skelton	1986
Anthony	Stocken	1986
Mark	Twidell	1986
Klaus	Coia	1987
Ted	Spooner	1987
Geoff	Stapleton	1987
Ron	Tito	1987
Peter	Wilson	1987
Bali Bob	McDonald	1988
John	Patel	1988
Frank	Teofilo	1988
Peter	Bulanyi	1989
Dolores	Dowdall	1989
Jenniy	Gregory	1989
Sue	Scott	1989
Richard	Corkish	1990
Michelle	Taylor	1990
Sally	Bartley	1991
Michael	Valantine	1991
Nigel	Morris	1992
Peter	Bradfield	1993
Brad	Cowin	1993
Peter	Erling	1994
Linda	Koschier	1994
Leon	Langner	1994
Zhengrong	Shi	1994
Ric	Brazzale	1995
Renate	Egan	1995
Liz	Harley Erling	1995
Rob	Taber	1995
Adrian	Turner	1995
Stefan	Jarnason	1996
Kathleen	Ryan	1996
Mark	Shakeshaft	1996
Gavin	Street	1996
Rod	Seares	1997