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Rising fuel costs and tax incentives have rekindled Buzz Burgett's solar dreams

Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle) - September 1, 2006

by Deirdre Gregg

Staff Writer

Photo: Matt Hagen
Buzz Burgett has been involved in solar energy since the 1970s.

When Earl "Buzz" Burgett formed his first company, he was at the forefront of the hot new solar industry, which was growing rapidly thanks to soaring fossil fuel prices, customers' desire for energy independence and government tax incentives.

That was almost 30 years ago.

Now he's positioning his company, Shoreline-based Northwest Mechanical Inc., to tap into what he sees as a new dawn for the solar industry. Recently, Burgett watched his 25-year-old son Zach installing solar units on a roof, a moment that symbolized for him the way he's come full circle.

"It was a proud moment to see him up there," he said.

Northwest Mechanical sells and installs both solar thermal collectors, which can heat water or homes, and solar photovoltaic panels, which produce electricity. The company's solar business has already picked up, Burgett said. So far this year, the company has 20 jobs installed or ready to be installed, and inquiries about solar have been increasing exponentially since the beginning of 2006. Burgett is installing solar thermal and solar electric units on the roof of the business, and plans a series of seminars this fall for architects and homeowners on solar technologies, along with a direct mail campaign.

"It's so exciting when people experience what the system's doing for them," Burgett says. "They're just bubbling over with enthusiasm -- it's very rewarding to be able to sell something that gets that kind of reaction."

Burgett has been waiting a long time to see those kinds of reactions.

When Burgett was 26, his brother and brother-in-law came to him afire with enthusiasm about how Americans could heat their homes with the power of the sun. In 1978, the three formed Energy Production Systems. The industry was so new that the three had to be inventors as well as installers. On their first job for the Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle, the trio used washing machine parts as valves for the system.

As Energy Production Systems' business picked up, Burgett joined the business full time.

"I quit a very nice-paying union sheet metal job where I had been promoted to foreman to become a solar entrepreneur," he said. "I'm not sure my wife has ever forgiven my brother for talking me into it."

Burgett spent long hours laboring at the new company, while his wife, a registered nurse, worked the night shift. "We were like two ships passing in the night those first years," he said.

By 1983, it seemed the hard work had paid off, as the company hit almost $1 million in sales. But there were signs the industry was headed for trouble.

President Jimmy Carter had been an enthusiastic advocate of solar technologies, and even set up solar collectors on the White House. But when Ronald Reagan was elected president, he slashed the Solar Energy Research Institute's $135 million budget by $100 million and fired half of its staff and all its contractors -- all in one day.

"By an order of magnitude, it was the worst day of my professional life," said Denis Hayes, who was director of the solar institute at the time and is now president and CEO of the Seattle-based Bullitt Foundation, which helps fund environmental nonprofits. "It was not just a setback, it was a thermonuclear bomb."

Then things got really bad. On Dec. 31, 1985, a generous federal tax credit expired, and home heating oil prices plummeted. Solar manufacturing firms had multiplied from 45 in 1974 to 225 in 1984, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, but by the early 1990s, only a few dozen were left. Meanwhile, Burgett's company and scores of other equipment distributors and installers went out of business.

For Burgett, 1986 was a brutal year. He had also badly injured his back, and was laid up for almost 11 months.

But then he started working at Northwest Mechanical promoting radiant heating, an alternative to forced-air heating. In 1993, he bought the business, and it grew fourfold to 24 employees.

Over the years, Burgett installed only a handful of solar energy systems. But, he said, his dream of working in solar energy lived on.

This year, new federal and state tax incentives kicked in that can significantly offset the cost of a solar energy system. And other energy costs are climbing. Burgett saw the opportunity to jump back into the field.

He thinks his experience and expertise make his company uniquely qualified to work as a solar installer. Now he's focusing almost all his marketing on solar, and believes the market will grow as people learn more about the tax incentives and how well solar energy can work, even in the region's cloudy climate.

"Solar can stand on its own, but it needs a push, and the push is here," he said.

Contact: dgregg@bizjournals.com • 206-447-8505 x114