Switch Renewable Energy

Chris Graves left his job working for the conventional energy sector and has since been dedicated to spreading the word about renewable energy. His ultimate goal is to have a solar roof on every home.

Chris Graves is a man on a mission. Since he left his job working for the conventional energy sector, he has been dedicated to spreading the word about the advantages of renewable energy. But Graves doesn’t just talk about energy; as CEO of Switch Renewable Energy he oversees every aspect of solar power system installations on commercial and private buildings. His ultimate goal is to have a solar roof on every home.
Graves’ journey from the corporate world to energy advocacy was an unusual one. He had worked as a consultant for various companies developing natural gas power plants.  Though he saw opportunity in alternative energy, economic concerns seemed at first to be an insurmountable obstacle.
“It was a transformational process,” Graves said.  “It wasn’t something where a product or service was immediately economic or viable, it was something that developed over time, it clearly needed to be done. And just like the automobile replaced the horse and buggy, and electric lighting and gas lighting replaced candles, it needed a nudge, it needed some economic help.”
That economic help has started to arrive, in the form of incentives offered by federal and local governments and a slow decrease in price as more people decide to go solar. These programs have met with mixed results, Graves said, due to inadequate enforcement. “I think it’s great that more jurisdictions are doing it,” he said. “But if you look at all the ways the fossil fuel industry is subsidized and compare, I think you would find that they do not fully capture solar benefits in the same way.”
People who want to “go green” are often deterred by the high costs of installation, but Graves said, the systems pay for themselves in the long term. He believes the solution is for financiers to lower upfront costs associated with these systems and spread out payments so people can commit to going green.
But in order for his vision of a solar powered world to happen, Graves said, it will also take a significant marketing effort to raise awareness and change attitudes toward renewable energy. Because the industry is relatively new, businesses lack the consistency and structure they need to effectively disseminate information about their products. Without an established knowledge of the technology, potential customers needed to see the benefits of solar firsthand before signing on.
“Business grows through word of mouth,” he said. “And my struggle, and I think the struggle for a lot of people in the renewable energy business, is to find a way to accelerate that process, to make it more like selling refrigerators, in that it’s a more established product and there’s more awareness.”
Switch’s first big local project, solarizing the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Washington DC, was a valuable learning experience in the economics and politics of solar installation. Graves became involved with the neighborhood in lobbying the DC city council to implement stricter renewable energy requirements for energy suppliers. After working with residents to plan their system, many chose to hire Switch to install their solar panels.
Installing a solar system of a larger scale was a practical test of Graves’ economic theory. It was also when Switch differentiated themselves from their competitors by making safety and durability their priorities.
Switch Renewable Energy is aware of cost concerns and maintains competitive pricing, Graves said. “But the idea is that we’re really focused on safety, and building a system so that it will genuinely last beyond the thirty years that we use as the standard in the industry…We want to be the guys that build it safe and build it sound.”
Instead of ignoring the structural hazards of the Mount Pleasant townhomes, Switch chose to retain a third-party engineer to inspect the buildings and assess whether they could support a solar system. The houses had unstable roofs and partition walls built out of brick without mortar to bind them. That meant that if they fastened solar panels in the standard way, the building would be unable to support the weight of the roof, especially in bad weather. Though the effects would not be seen immediately, Graves said, a poor installation would eventually cause the roof to collapse. Other installers chose to ignore the risks, but Switch constructed additional supports to allow the panels to work without damage to the existing structure.
“So it was a structurally sound solution, a solution that will work well for over 30 years, and extremely safe,” said Graves. “But it’s something that requires us going the extra mile. We had to do the engineering studies, we obviously had to do the extra work in terms of installation, and we had to design the system.”
Another important and complex project for Switch was at Mountainside summer camp in Frederick, Md. They created a system that could use solar power, plug into the power grid with a battery as a backup. Unlike other grid-tied inverters, Graves said, this system could continue to function even during a utility outage, using only the necessary power source. With some modifications to the existing technology, they created a more efficient and reliable system.
The available tools used to tap into renewable energy still have some shortcomings, said Graves. “We move very incrementally, we make some mistakes but there are still things that need to be done in terms of improving the system.” In a fast-growing industry, each project is an opportunity to develop new solutions to the problems that arise in working with alternative energy.
Aside from the well-known advantages of solar power-- reducing pollution and dependence on fossil fuels, Graves said that an important but often overlooked benefit is its capacity to lessen the strain on the electrical power grid. A grid-tied solar inverter can feed power back into a distribution network, and with a battery backup, can manage power so that they will work when the utility grid shuts down. This kind of system would be especially valuable in high-volume areas where there is more pressure on the grid system and frequent blackouts. In urban areas, where there may not be space for additional energy infrastructure, roofs and parking lots provide an ideal location for solar panels and wind turbines.
Graves said that he is also looking into other alternative energy sources and hopes to expand Switch to eventually become a national company. He brings a practical business sensibility to the clean energy campaign, urging people who wish to “go green” to focus on basic changes that will add value.
The sense of working towards a worthwhile mission gives his work a deeper meaning. “There’s something about what we’re doing that goes beyond the standard business metrics,” he said. “It’s the whole idea of getting the solar roof on every house and how that could radically transform a lot of things in this country.”
By changing the world one roof at a time, Switch is laying the foundation for a solar-powered future. ELT