Chapel Hill Entrepreneur Wants To Make Solar Mainstream With ‘Solar Trees’

A Chapel Hill upstart is trying to get the word out about solar, and it’s using an extremely visible invention as its mouthpiece.

“Before [solar] becomes mainstream, it has to be a lot more familiar to people,” says Spotlight Solar CEO Craig Merrigan. “We’re trying to increase awareness and understanding.”

Specifically, Spotlight Solar calls its products “Solar Trees,” clusters of solar panels that, when installed, are extremely visible – the complete opposite of installations on flat top roofs that are “only visible by helicopter,” he points out.

Merrigan didn’t set out to advocate for solar energy. A lifelong marketer at firms such as IBM and Lenovo, corporate brand strategy was his focus, not energy startups.

A layoff wave in 2009, however, forced an instant re-evaluation.

The pink slip awoke an entrepreneurial itch. From Lenovo, he found a job as a consultant. And from there, he co-founded Spotlight Solar.

As its name implies, Spotlight is a solar energy company, worlds away from his PC marketing history. While his father had penned a book on solar in 1975, it wasn’t just technology that fueled his entrepreneurial efforts. Nor was it sustainable talking points. It was the newness of the business, he says.

“The personal computer business was, at the time, already a very commoditized place,” he explains. “Everybody but Apple was essentially competing on commodity dynamics, speeds and feeds for the price … It’s a difficult place to keep innovating.”

Merrigan was looking for a less mature market where he could “invent” a new business model. And he says he and his four-person team have done it with Spotlight.

While public sentiment regarding solar is high – at 80 percent according to a recent Gallup poll – it’s still an obscure technology in terms of visibility, he says. “It hides up on the roof or out in the desert so very few see it,” he says. “We turned it into a product, these novel, attractive structures that bring solar into public spaces and bring it to where people can engage with it and, essentially make a statement of advocacy.”

Sixty-five of his team’s installations are in place, including at places such as the Orlando Convention Center and N.C. State University. “It’s one of 12 solar systems on campus at N.C. State, but it’s the only one you can see,” he says.

The installations, which are targeted at public spaces, are manufactured in Ohio. And several are placed in conjunction with electric vehicle chargers.

Merrigan says he’s currently exploring partnership opportunities with EV charger manufacturers for a way to possibly integrate both technologies into one installation.

Each structure produces from 1.6 kilowatts to 4.7 kilowatts of energy – enough, he says, to power an electric vehicle for tens of thousands of miles each year.

And investors are buying in. According to a securities disclosure this week, four investors have contributed to a $225,000 debt round – one Merrigan expects to expand past the $250,000 cap listed in the filing.

Source: Triangle Business Journal, Lauren K. Ohnesorge
Photo: Spotlight Solar has 65 of these Solar Tree installations installed.