Firms ride wave of faster, cheaper solar installation (Boston)

Through Westford-based GreenRay Inc., a new solar energy system will hit the market this October that company CEO Miles Russell says will cut installation times in half.

The system doesn’t include a new type of panel, however. Instead, it eliminates some of the materials that are part of typical solar systems and puts the required parts — panel, inverter, mounting, wiring — into a single package that Russell says will be easier for installers to work with.

The result is a “plug and play” system that takes a day or less to install, compared with the typical two-day installation, Russell said.

GreenRay is one local example of the next wave of solar innovation, which industry experts say will be less about engineering the most efficient panel, and more about making installation and financing an easier and cheaper process.

“The screaming need for innovation has moved from the module to the implementation side of things,” said Rob Day, partner with Black Coral Capital, a cleantech-focused VC firm in Boston.

In particular, labor costs related to installation are a major issue facing the solar power industry. Labor cost is expected to exceed the cost of the solar panels for the first time by the middle of next year, said Jim Dunn, CEO of Millbury-based integrator Future Solar Systems LLC.

Future Solar, which installs systems that are 100 kilowatts or larger for schools and other organizations, has devised a method to pre-build parts of its solar arrays to cut the installation time, Dunn said.

Within the next two months, the company plans to start mounting, wiring and testing its arrays indoors before delivering the arrays to the job site and installing them using a crane.

The new process could reduce overall installation costs by 20 percent to 30 percent, he said.

Read the full story in the Boston Business Journal.