Engine For Green Jobs: Premier Power CEO Dean Marks (Part 6)

SM: Which exchange are you listed on?

DM: We are about to go on NASDAQ. We are over the counter right now. We have filed everything, and we have a board of directors that includes former California senator Kevin Murray, who authored the SB 1, a solar bill. We have Bob Maderas, who is in San Mateo. He is involved with Solaics, which is an ingot developer. Instead of growing a single ingot they grow continuous ingots. They can do eight in a day whereas most companies can do one or two. They grow the ingot, slice the silicon and then use those for cells. The chairman of the board of Solaicx is on our board. We have a good diverse, independent board to help us move forward.

2008 was profitable and Q4 was huge for us. We did 400% over Q4 of 2007 and 80% over Q3 of 2008. There is a lot of opportunity out there. People ask us if things are slowing down or tapering off. I felt that they were because January is always slow. We just looked at things a week ago, and residential is up over this time last year and commercial is $500,000 over this time last year. We have a goal of doing $80 million this year, which would be doubling. Those are tough numbers but we are holding our own. We have so much in the pipeline to be excited about. There are some really big jobs that are going to be breaking loose in the next two to four weeks.

SM: How has your green installation methodology impacted your profits?

DM: I think our green installation methodology is important. When we talk about a 1.2 megawatts that we did for SMUD, we are talking about three acres of thin-film modules. We did not dig up tons of topsoil and disturb the surface. Most comapnies dig 3 foot by 6 foot holes and fill them with cement. That would have required 1,000 holes with cement in them had we done it the way other companies do. The way we did it, there was no cement inside holes at all. We took a machine and vibrated I-beams into the ground. That is as close to the ‘leave no trace’ mantra we could get. In 30 years when the system is obsolete, it can be completely removed and recycled and there will be no trace that it was there.

I think that is a concept we embrace completely. We are a green company. We have a system we are building our own way here. We did Jay Leno’s garage. People recognize that we are a different company. We are the ones who have done PG&E and Sierra Pacific, which is Nevada’s utility company. Utility companies are choosing us.

At our building we have 130 kilowatts and hybrid cars. We recycle and use bamboo in construction. Our mission is ‘Delighting customers by installing solar systems profitably around the world and produce 50 billion kilowatt hours’. That sounds like a lot, but our systems are now producing 1.3 billion kilowatt hours. We feel it is an attainable goal in the next four years.

We are flying under the radar a bit right now, which is one of the reasons I did not want to go public. I am not that flamboyant CEO you would normally see. I am usually very conservative. It is difficult getting out and telling my story. We have not been doing much of it. We do want to continue to grow the company and keep doing these installations.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Engine For Green Jobs: Premier Power CEO Dean Marks
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