Looking for a job to help you save the planet? You live in the right state for it.
According to Environmental Entreprenuers, an environmental policy group that studies Green jobs, Minnesota ranked 10th in the nation in adding new clean-energy jobs in the first quarter of 2013. The 189 new jobs, the group said in a June 4 report, come from 83 announced projects in the state as well as 106 projects that are in progress.
There are more jobs where those came from.
Joel Cannon, CEO of tenKsolar, a solar energy products in Bloomington, said his company employs about 60 people in Minnesota in the clean energy industry. The company also has about 60 employees in China. And while none of those 189 new clean energy jobs belong to his company, Cannon said it won't be long until tenKsolar is adding to its workforce.
"We have not added any jobs in the last year," Cannon said, "mainly because the solar market has been very competitive." The company has been busy making photovoltaic cells, improving its manufacturing process and working to improve its product while reducing its costs.
That's what has helped the company grow to its current size, Cannon said.
"In just the last five years, the installed costs have come down threefold," he said. This is due to solar panels becoming efficient enough to pay for themselves, which was not always the case.
Back in the 1970s, when solar panels looked like the next great energy source, the cost of a kilowatt-hour was many times higher than the cost of installing the system. Furthermore, Cannon said, the peak efficiency of a system could be dragged down rather quickly if even one cell in the solar panel went bad.
That's where tenKsolar has helped bring down costs. To understand the difference between old solar panels and new ones, Cannon said, think of Christmas lights. In the old days, you had a string of lights, and if one went out, the whole string of lights was affected. But for today's Christmas lights, when a bulb dies all the other bulbs still shine.
It's the same with the individual solar cells in a panel. "Solar cells are packaged into a solar module," Cannon said. "With the old modules, if there was soiling or damage on any one cell, you'd get low output. We make it so each cell is independent of its neighbors."
The lower cost of installation today and the better efficiency, Cannon said, has made solar panels a financially viable energy solution for homeowners. "It's really only possible today because of the low-cost electronics available."
As tenKsolar grows in the future, so will other companies that work in the clean energy field. Cannon said his company outsources components to other companies, many right in our region. For example, it buys its racking — the cases for its solar components — from Alexandria Industries in Alexandria. And it purchases some electronic components from Electronic Systems in Sioux Falls, S.D.
"We have several companies like that in our supply chain," Cannon said. "These companies, they do other things too, but they also supply us."
And that is how Green jobs — clean energy jobs — are helping the whole workforce. What a bright idea, huh?
