Was today’s modern solar industry inspired by off-grid California-living, marijuana-growing, Grateful Dead-loving hippies? That’s the main question explored in “Solar Roots: The Pioneers of PV,” a new documentary that recently premiered in Grass Valley, California.
The entertaining documentary traces the history, colorful characters, off-grid homeowners, solar educators and the entrepreneurs who embraced solar photovoltaic technology for vastly different reasons.
Shot on a shoestring budget with volunteers, “Solar Roots” may not have the polished production of a Hollywood documentary, but it is an untold story about the people and early solar and technology that led to the modern solar industry.
Since 2009, when I first started in the solar industry, I had heard jokes and anecdotes about the marijuana-growing hippies who sparked the residential solar industry. Until “Solar Roots,” no one had ever set up a camera to talk to those early solar pioneers and document why rural America became a hub of off-grid solar innovation.
Enter Jeff Spies, a longtime solar veteran and the documentary’s executive producer. In 2016, Spies organized a weekend party for the off-grid solar pioneers of Northern California, where he started his career in the early 2000s. After hearing so many colorful stories about why these rural homesteaders bought $14/watt solar panels and started new solar installation and distribution businesses, Spies enlisted another solar industry veteran, Jason Vetterli, to travel to Northern California, Colorado and New Mexico to capture these unique and personal stories on video.
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