ALUMNI PROFILE
Solar for All board member Jeff Drummond ’94/95 and founder Greg Harr ’94 help low-income Oregon residents afford solar energy systems.
SOLAR FOR ALL Written by KOREN WETMORE
G
reg Harr ’94 believes everyone should have access to free energy from the sun. So, when he installed a solar energy system on his home, he was
shocked to learn that the incentives and rebates available to him would never help those who most needed to reduce their energy bills: low- income families. He and his wife, both engineers, earn salaries that qualified them for
more than $10,000 in tax incentives and subsidies. With no dependents, they also had the disposable income to afford the system’s installation costs and other out-of-pocket expenses. “Then it dawned on me that someone who’s struggling to put food
on the table was never going to access these tax breaks, this money or solar power. That prompted me to see how I could help,” says Harr, who serves as a business process improvement engineer for CH2M HILL, which designs buildings that include solar solutions. Harr founded Solar for All (
www.solarforall.org), a nonprofit that
partners with local housing organizations by purchasing solar elec- tric systems for affordable housing projects at no cost to the partner organization. Solar panels are purchased from local manufacturers, and installation costs for each project are covered by a combination of state incentive programs and public donations. For its first project, Solar for All has partnered with Community Vision
Inc. to install a 3.2kW solar energy system in a new ADA-accessible home being built this summer in Portland, Ore. The system is expected to cover all of the home’s annual heating and cooling needs. In true Mudd fashion, Harr has built a team around him, drawing
people from the community and the solar industry to help with his foray into the nonprofit world. The first board members he recruited included the sales director from a local solar installation company and a longtime friend with a large local business network. He built alliances with Community Vision, Habitat for Humanity and SynchroSolar, a local solar panel installer. He even worked with the state
of Oregon to find a way to funnel solar incentives to those who most need them. “A disadvantage for people who qualify for affordable housing is that
they usually don’t have a tax burden, which means they don’t qualify for available income tax credits,” he says. “Oregon has a law that allows us to sell a $6,000 tax credit to any Oregon resident. So residents can invest in our project, covering almost half of the installation cost, and then reap the benefit of the tax credits—about $1,500 per year—on their income taxes for the next four years.” HMC alumnus Jeffrey Drummond ’94/95 helped organize the proj-
ect’s public fundraising campaign, marketing and communications. As an electrical engineer, he also lends his technical expertise and plans to serve on the Solar for All board of directors. “I’ve known Greg since college and knew he was a great guy with
the skills and motivation to make this organization a success. I wanted to be part of it from the ground level,” said Drummond. “Solar for All was a perfect fit for me, combining my experience and interest in alternative energy and sustainability and my desire to do development work locally instead of abroad.” No stranger to solar startups, Drummond previously helped HMC
engineering Professor Adrian Hightower raise funds for a nonprofit that brought solar energy systems to remote regions of Mali. He’s also worked as a consultant on solar panel industrial installations and the concentrating linear Fresnel reflector solar power system at Sandia National Labs in New Mexico. Harr credits HMC with giving him the problem-solving ability that led
to Solar for All’s mission. “It caused me to look at things from a systems perspective—economic and environmental—and to develop what I call the ‘three birds with one stone’ approach,” he says. “We see this as a way to support our local businesses, reduce our nation’s carbon footprint and help break the poverty cycle by lowering monthly utility bills for families who qualify for low-income housing.”
SUMMER 2013 Har vey Mudd College 31
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