SON OF SUN

Thanks to Diane Liepins for the tip on this story.

He’s still following the sun
Lee Romney, January 3, 2006 (LA Times)

- IN the beginning…the mid-1970s, there was no solar energy industry…only a small collection of "experimenters, forward-thinking people, inventors." Even eking out a living was an impossibility: [Gary] Gerber survived, courtesy of a side gig selling cheese from his Volkswagen van…Three decades later, his Sun Light & Power can barely keep up. A frenzied demand for solar power, or photovoltaic, installations has eclipsed the water heater portion of the business, and since 2002, sales have ballooned by about 66% annually — to more than $11 million in 2006…
- Once the domain of hippies…renewable energy is now a pillar of California politics…Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed the California Solar Initiative…to help bring solar power to a million rooftops, as well as a landmark greenhouse-gas reduction law…

- Cities in the Bay Area — California's alternative-energy hotbed — are tricking out public buildings with solar panels, outfitting municipal vehicle fleets with the latest plug-in hybrids and tweaking building codes to require energy-efficient features in new construction. Large companies are scrambling to certify their buildings as "green."
- And across the state, in locations not at all off the beaten path, solar installations on homes and small businesses have soared, thanks largely to rebates for systems tied into the state power grid…1998 saw 87…the number exploded to more than 5,600 in 2006…

- FOR Gerber, 53, it is a head-spinning state of affairs…Curly-haired and soft-spoken, Gerber today looks the part of a steady engineer in his pressed khakis and checkered button-down shirt, four pens aligned in his front pocket. But he remains at heart a zealot, committed to renewable energy down to the solar watch on his wrist…he is among a handful of believers who came of age in the mid-'70s boom, survived the gloom of the '80s and '90s and emerged to thrive in today's market…
- Solar power has had previous brushes with the mass market: In 1891, Clarence M. Kemp designed the first commercial s