“If you want to be accurate, you’ll want to call those modules, not panels,” says Greg Atchley, owner of SunWorld USA, as I peruse the big black rectangular things in his showroom on Airway Drive. “People who don’t know any better call them panels, but it’s modules over panels.”
Good to know. I don’t know a damned thing about photo-voltaic solar modules. These I know weigh about 44 pounds each, measure 65 by 39 inches, and are rated up to 245 watt peak power, but that’s just from the literature. In fact, I’ve been incorrectly calling the big black rectangular things on my roof at home that heat my water tank “passive solar” for more than 11 years now. What I do know is I want to generate more of my family’s electricity from the sun, so I’ve been shopping around, trying to learn some stuff.
Turns out, the 1985 Reno High grad arrived at his knowledge in much the same way. He was a general contractor who specialized in building high end homes. “About 10-12 years ago, I made a conscientious decision to stop building new homes.”
That use of the word “conscientious” is interesting. Typically, people say they make “conscious” decisions, but I could tell he meant it the way he said it. “Yes, I wanted to be a better steward of the environment,” he said. “And I was interested in ’environmentally friendly’ anything.”
Now, Atchley seems like a mellow, steady guy, and in fact, I think my slightly hyper demeanor put him off a little bit, but man, after that sentence, we went from LED lights to LVD (low voltage discharge), to magnetic induction lighting and back to solar modules before the ink even started running smoothly out of my pen.
The long and the short of it is that his current partner Shumin Zhang, who owned Western Stone at the time, brought back some modules from China, basically not understanding what would be required to actually sell the things. Atchley spent “three years working with Shumin and different factories to get these guys certified over here in the United States. And what we ended up with was SunWorld becoming our parent company, so we’re the only representative in the United States for SunWorld,” shipping all over the world.
“Solar use for home and business is a great option. And as power rates go up, and they’re going to keep going up and up, it’s going to be more affordable to put solar on your house or business.”
Last March, a lawsuit was settled that ended up putting a 200 percent tariff on modules that use cells made in China. That was fortunate for Atchley because while the modules are assembled in China, most of the parts are not made there, which, if nothing else, helps keep costs down. “Kind of like GM, right?”
“One of the keys to this business and the lighting business and anything else in renewables is that we’re selling energy efficiency,” he said. “You can say we’re selling modules or energy efficient lighting, environmentally friendly lighting, but it’s energy efficiency.”