Lower costs making solar competitive energy alternative

SHINE BRIGHT: Joe Tomlinson, founder of rTerra PV Solutions LLC, says that rTerra has a small, minority stake in PV Solutions, but that is the only direct link. / COURTESY RTERRA PV SOLUTIONS
SHINE BRIGHT: Joe Tomlinson, founder of rTerra PV Solutions LLC, says that rTerra has a small, minority stake in PV Solutions, but that is the only direct link. / COURTESY RTERRA PV SOLUTIONS

Joe Tomlinson’s start as an environmental entrepreneur came with organic apparel, first T-shirts, then founding the Revel Seven company and into developing a denim-finishing process that didn’t involve caustic salts. But when the economy faded a few years ago, he decided the future was in renewable energy. So Tomlinson joined forces with old Aquidneck Island contacts at rTerra, the Middletown solar developer in the process of building out solar farms in the Ocean State.
Once in the solar industry, Tomlinson developed a flexible plastic racking system for solar arrays that could be mounted on delicate locations, especially capped landfills, and founded rTerra PV Solutions LLC (soon to be renamed PV Solutions LLC) to commercialize it. This winter Tomlinson secured a $300,000 state Renewable Energy Fund loan and is in the process of building manufacturing capacity and finding customers.

PBN: How did PV Solutions come together and how is it related to rTerra?
TOMLINSON: During my time in the solar space, I had been introduced to folks at The Cooley Group in Pawtucket and in particular Jeff Flath, who is now at eNow. They were in the [landfill cap] membrane business and wanted to get into solar landfill projects. … I came up with the design that PV Solutions is based on. It allows us to design [a flexible mounting system for solar panels] for exposed membrane caps and connect without having to physically adhere to the cap. They can move independent of the underlying membrane. In doing that we were able to use higher-efficiency panels. We have a subsystem called T-Flex [which] mounts to the membrane and then panels mount to the T-Flex system. We put it on a pilot system on a Cooley-exposed membrane cap in southern Delaware.

PBN: And so this is totally separate from rTerra?
TOMLINSON: There is some shared ownership. RTerra Holdings is the primary owner of rTerra operating and development, which develops in Rhode Island. PV Solutions is independent of that. Having developed the solution outside of the rTerra development business, I started to go forward and commercialize it. So rTerra Holdings has a small, minority stake in [Middletown-based] PV Solutions, but that is the only direct link.

PBN: It seems like there is a lot of action in solar right now. What’s driving this?
TOMLINSON: There is a confluence of factors. There is a dramatic reduction in hard costs, which make the financial models bring the cost of energy much lower than it was a year ago. And that serves to allow the developer to offer the power they generate at a lower rate.

PBN: Is it the photovoltaic panels specifically that are much cheaper now?
TOMLINSON: Yes, the panels have come down dramatically to where now the majority of costs are soft costs: administrative costs and deployment costs and the cost of time and materials on-site, not related to the panels and inverter systems and hardware.

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PBN: So how does PV Solutions fit into that?
TOMLINSON: We are focused on lowering the balance of soft-systems costs. We are going after cost savings that are disruptive in nature, in excess of 30 percent or greater is what we are looking to achieve with the T-Flex integrated racking system. It’s a lightweight, quickly deployable, tool-less interface of racking and panels. Depending on the panels we use there is zero grounding requirement, so we eliminate the need for grounding wires. The system is modular and from an engineering perspective is as close to a one-size-fits-all solution as it gets.

PBN: Do you sell just the racks or panels and installation too?
TOMLINSON: We provide the racking and installation and basically as much as the client requires. We do deployment of systems and mounting of panels. With our optimized methodology, you reduce engineering and site requirements and panel deployment is incredibly fast. The racking we deliver predeployed on a flexible system. We role it in and snap panels in.

PBN: How far have you gotten to scaling this? Are there any projects in the pipeline beyond the one in Delaware?
TOMLINSON: On the immediate agenda we have completion of engineering and more scaled product development so we can get into multimegawatt business. … Our primary market is in landfill development and slope development, because this is a system that is deployable on slopes. … Our focus is landfill and brownfield spaces, basically unusable land. We don’t require heavy ballast to prevent it from getting blown off the top. Since you can’t put pilings in a landfill cap, they generally put ballast to secure it, but that can cause localized settlement that damages the membrane.

PBN: Where is the assembly and manufacturing?
TOMLINSON: The assembly and manufacturing are not currently established, but we are looking at sites. The Delaware system we did on Aquidneck Island, though not in our office facility. We are talking with [CB Richard Ellis-New England] and Quonset Development and looking for light industrial space to develop our early systems, refine manufacturing protocols and see the growth that we can build a purpose-built facility for systems. We would like to locate it at Quonset. •

INTERVIEW
Joe Tomlinson
POSITION: Founder of rTerra PV Solutions LLC (also an rTerra board member)
BACKGROUND: A Marion, Mass., native who moved out West so his kids could compete in snowboarding, Tomlinson has always worked in environmentally aligned businesses, first organic clothing, now solar power.
EDUCATION: Studying business at UMass Dartmouth
FIRST JOB: Cutting greens at a golf course
RESIDENCE: Split between Utah and Portsmouth
AGE: 50

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