This article is sponsored by REC Americas. In this Voices interview, Solar Power World spoke with George McClellan, Senior Manager of Technical Sales at REC Americas, as he prepares to retire after more than 15 years with the company. He reflects on his long and successful career in solar, what led him to REC, and how solar technology has advanced over his tenure.
Solar Power World: Could you start by telling us about yourself and your role at REC Americas?
George McClellan: The way I like to define my duties is: if it has to do with pricing and availability, it’s not my problem. If it has to do with anything else, it is my problem. It’s kind of a mixed bag of everything technical—finding information, educating my sales team and customers, providing feedback on products, bubbling that up to the factory, getting feedback from the field, and resolving issues with installations.
What has kept you at REC for your 15-year tenure?
I really enjoy the work environment, the people, and the job. There is altruism in working in renewable energies. It’s easy to wake up in the morning and go to work even after being in the industry for 20 years. Helping build the team into one of the top sales organizations in the industry has been very rewarding. I’ve met so many incredible people, not just at REC, but across the globe and especially in the U.S., working in renewable energy.
Early on, the travel was a lot of fun—going all over the U.S., Europe, Singapore, China, and Vietnam. After a million miles, that starts to wear on you, but I really enjoyed it. I miss the face-to-face meetings. One of the good things that came out of COVID was realizing we could do things virtually and be almost as effective as meeting face to face. It’s been really good for our travel budget, but I still like going to the places and meeting with people.
I’ve had a lot of really good dinners. If you ask anyone, they’ll tell you I’m a bit of a foodie. I’ve enjoyed going to different parts of the world, meeting people, breaking bread with them, and really getting to know them. That’s probably been the most fun—the people and the job.
Looking back to 2010 when you joined the REC team, could you have predicted where we are today with solar panel technology?
If you think back to 2010, very few people predicted the impact of China Inc. on the renewable energy world. China was just coming into the U.S., and it caught the industry by surprise. It caused a lot of people to rethink their business plans. Ultimately, it was a good thing because it brought prices down across the whole industry, but it was pretty savage the way it made people stress their business plans. There was consolidation, which was good.
There were a lot of updates that were evolutionary and kind of easy to predict—higher voltage arrays, transformerless inverters, the shift to monocrystalline, getting rid of dual-axis trackers (thank goodness), and the proliferation of single-axis trackers in utility scale.
The commercialization of half-cut cells and PERC cells was revolutionary. REC was the leader in that. It had been done before, but REC was the first to fully commercialize it. We took a lot of heat for the half-cut cells and the change to the twin architecture in 2014, but now pretty much the entire industry is doing that.
We figured thinner glass was going to be coming in. If you ever picked up a 72-cell module with four-millimeter glass, that would stretch your arm out. Some of those things were easy to predict, some were revolutionary, and it was really fun to be around and watch all of this get implemented. There’s still great stuff happening.
Where do you see solar technology advancing in the coming years?
It’s pretty interesting because we go through what they call the solar coaster. And it’s not just in sales, it’s in technology. You climb up, do a bunch of great stuff, and then you stagnate, and then you do it again.
I expect the industry will start exploring new material systems such as perovskites and other multi-junction architectures, driven by the industry’s lust for more watts peak at standard test conditions. Cell size will probably standardize, which I’m looking forward to—we just don’t know what size yet.
Module-level power electronics will probably be integrated into the module. I expect clamping and racking will also get integrated, because right now we’re operating in three different silos: power electronics, racking, and modules. We’ve got to start working together as one with standardized solutions.
Some manufacturers are already moving into high-impact polycarbonate frames. At some point, the industry will move away from selling watts peak at STC and focus on selling kilowatt-hours per kilowatt peak, really understanding levelized cost of energy. We’re still stuck on this one thing—it’s like the auto industry in the ’60s and ’70s, when they sold horsepower instead of miles per gallon.
In the current political environment, I feel there’s going to be a big focus on domestic content. An interesting piece I like to bring up when people talk about technology is: why are solar panels so expensive? People say it’s the materials, but they’re expensive because they have to last 25 years outside. Everyone wants to get every kilowatt out of them, so they’re warranted for 25 years.
But what happens if you didn’t care how long a solar panel lasts? Think about a light bulb—10 years ago, you didn’t care how long one lasted. Incandescent bulbs were 10 for a buck. Screw one in—if it went out in a week, you didn’t care. You went to the hall closet, grabbed another, and replaced it. Some lasted five years, but we didn’t really care. Then we moved to LED bulbs and cared when they were $10 each. Now LED bulbs are super cheap.
So what happens if solar was that way—super cheap and easy to replace? You litter your rooftop with panels and have a display in your kitchen that says all your panels are working except panel 7 and 9, and then panel 12 goes out. You go to Home Depot, buy a tube of panels, come home, climb on your roof, pull the old ones out, roll the new ones in, and recycle the old ones.
Two things happen—you get everything done, and now you’ve got an easily recyclable piece. But that’s just one thought. I’ve been saying that for about 10 years, just trying to get people’s ideas on it. Will it happen? I don’t know.
What would you say is the highlight of your solar career? Any moments in particular that stand out?
It’s hard to point to a single moment, but it’s been a lot of fun. What I really enjoy is teaching. I used to teach a lot of NAPCEP classes, and we had a little band of evangelists going around talking with people. I still have people come up to me and say, “Hey, you may not remember me, but I was in one of your classes in 2010 on microcracks.” Seeing someone 15 years later say they remember what I taught and got something out of it—that’s super rewarding. It’s so much fun to hear that.
I also received a 15-year longevity award at our company. You don’t really think about it until they hand you the certificate and you realize, “Oh yeah, this has been 15 years.” Those little moments are special. You have to stop and appreciate them instead of saying, “It’s just another day.” It’s not—you’ve done something great. We’ve built this company here in the United States, and it’s been fantastic. So not one specific moment, but one type of moment is really rewarding to me.
What words of wisdom would you offer for those in the solar industry today?
I’ve worked with a lot of people coming into the solar industry. I’ve worked in education and spent some time teaching seminars at the University of New Mexico. I’ve been part of the industry as it’s been growing up. In the early years, there were no classes in solar—nowhere you could go to get solar education. You just had to be in the industry. So we poached people from the silicon and computer microchip industries, which is where I came from.
You’re bringing in a lot of young engineers that you’re mentoring, and that’s been good to do. But I always tell them: always be learning. Get away from your desk. Get out in the field. I always learn something, even now, when I go to an audit, installation, or inspection. If you’re an installer, pick up a trade magazine and find out what’s coming next. Check out reports from the nationally recognized test labs—NREL publishes some great stuff. If you’re in the installer business, talk with your manufacturer and see if you can get a tour of their factory. Don’t stay in your silo. Travel. Talk with your downstream and upstream partners. Talk with your end users and the people who are selling you stuff.
When I was at Intel, everything was about a three-letter acronym. We had BKMs—best known methods. Share your best known methods with people. Talk with other installers, sales teams, and technical people.
Solar is pretty interesting. Solar PV isn’t in its infancy, but we’ve still got a long way to grow. That’s the cool part—we get to watch it. There are a few ways you can watch it: from the parking lot, from the stadium seats, from the sidelines, or on the field watching it develop. You define how much you’re going to participate, but it’s still wide open as to where it’s going, what you want to do, and how you want to be part of it. There are no limits right now. It’s fantastic. It’s still a wide-open industry. It’s going to be a lot of fun.
To learn more about REC, visit www.recgroup.com.