Was today’s modern solar industry inspired by off-grid California-living, marijuana-growing, Grateful Dead-loving hippies? That’s the main question explored in “Solar Roots: The Pioneers of PV,” a new documentary that recently premiered in Grass Valley, California.
The entertaining documentary traces the history, colorful characters, off-grid homeowners, solar educators and the entrepreneurs who embraced solar photovoltaic technology for vastly different reasons.
Shot on a shoestring budget with volunteers, “Solar Roots” may not have the polished production of a Hollywood documentary, but it is an untold story about the people and early solar and technology that led to the modern solar industry.
Since 2009, when I first started in the solar industry, I had heard jokes and anecdotes about the marijuana-growing hippies who sparked the residential solar industry. Until “Solar Roots,” no one had ever set up a camera to talk to those early solar pioneers and document why rural America became a hub of off-grid solar innovation.
Enter Jeff Spies, a longtime solar veteran and the documentary’s executive producer. In 2015, Spies organized a weekend party for the off-grid solar pioneers of Northern California, where he started his career in the mid-2000s. After hearing so many colorful stories about why these rural homesteaders bought $14/watt solar panels and started new solar installation and distribution businesses, Spies enlisted another solar industry veteran, Jason Vetterli, to travel to Southern California, Arizona, Oregon, Colorado and Wisconsin to capture these unique and personal stories on video.
This isn’t the first documentary about the solar industry or its challenges, and to be clear, Vetterli and Spies’ narrative is not about creating “the solar biz.” Truly, it’s about a particular tribe of solar early adopters. Through interviews, we learn about the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s counterculture movement and the people who stumbled into solar businesses out of necessity and good timing.
Listening to these stories, you quickly understand that none of these solar pioneers intended to get into the solar business to make millions or solve climate change. Their real motivations were tied to maintaining their independence from cities while having enough electricity to keep the lights on and the music playing while raising a family. Beyond the home applications, solar became a new water-pumping solution that supported the pioneers’ cash-only “agricultural” businesses.
Vetterli sets the film’s tone and theme with the first scene. Instead of fading in to a utility solar farm or suburban residential roofs, the film opens with a young hippie using a wire to connect a single 35-watt ARCO solar panel to a car battery that powers an old cassette boombox. He then inserts a Grateful Dead tape and presses play.
The Grateful Dead-inspired musical score, composed by Midnight North, a band whose members include another solar veteran, TJ Kanczuzewski, appropriately plays under the rest of the film’s narrative and interviews.
After a brief solar technology history lesson, Spies interviews the solar pioneers about the roots of their solar PV fascination, how they came to realize that solar could grow and impact their lives and their off-grid movement.
This realization wouldn’t have happened without the back-to-the-land movement. Buying land was inexpensive but getting a utility to build a power line to DIY houses in rural California cost millions. While living without electricity, we learn about their lives before and after PV.
Before PV, the pioneers had to jerry-rig their pickup trucks’ batteries to listen to music and use dangerous kerosene lanterns for light. Gasoline generators were loud, costly, required maintenance and were contrary to the quiet, remote lifestyle they wanted. After PV (and lead-acid batteries), the solar pioneers could enjoy light, music, small DC refrigerators for cold beer and fresh food, 12-volt TVs and other DC devices that were designed for camping.
After implementing solar PV into their own homesteads, the pioneers wanted to share their find with their neighbors. It was that desire to share the off-grid solar PV love that led to the early solar distributor businesses, publications and training centers — not a desire to make millions.
As businesses grew, cultures clashed. We hear the story of when corporate solar salespeople traveled to Humboldt County in three-piece suits to meet their best customers who are wearing T-shirts and jeans and carry the scent and cash of a “weedpreneur.”
While the majority of the film is about the people who wanted an off-grid lifestyle, Vetterli and Spies also interview the late 1990s PV code and policy pioneers. These solar people also wore suit, but they also saw grid-tied potential to make solar mainstream.
“Solar Roots” does a great job covering this off-grid to grid-tied transition, but the film only covers a fraction of the stories and people who inspired the multi-gigawatt and global solar industry that exists today, and that’s O.K. A single two-hour documentary could never cover all of the world’s solar pioneers, but we’re fortunate to have met these particular solar people. They may not have started the residential solar industry, but they certainly contributed to it.
Spies and Vetterli plan to release the entire documentary online in the coming months and have set up a mailing list at www.solar-roots.com for people to receive updates.
Tor “Solar Fred” Valenza is a former film and TV writer (Stargate SG-1, Dharma & Greg, The Dead Zone) and current chief solar public relations geek at UnThink Solar, a solar PR and communications firm.
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