With original owners back, a fresh vision for Sebastopol solar energy firm

Editor’s Note: The Press Democrat is publishing a series of stories about Sonoma County innovators who are tackling global warming. We invite readers to propose stories of those involved locally in climate change. Share your ideas by contacting our editor, rick.green@pressdemocrat.com.

Engineers Willard MacDonald and Mark Galli have long believed in solar energy to power the planet.

Now, they’re launching a new chapter.

In 2005, they founded Solmetric to develop tools to make solar more effective. In 2014 they sold Solmetric to the giant Utah-based solar installer Vivint Solar for $12 million. Last August, they bought it back.

Next steps: develop new products and expand further internationally.

“Solmetric is back, under local ownership. We have new product ideas and this is a platform to develop those new ideas,” MacDonald said during a recent interview at the Solmetric plant on Morris Street in Sebastopol.

MacDonald and Galli are among a group of engineers who became friends when they worked in the early 2000s at Agilent Technologies in northeast Santa Rosa, formerly Hewlett Packard, that is now Keysight Technologies.

Since then, all have made important contributions to climate science. At least a dozen of them have worked at Solmetric over the years.

"My goal has been to entice other smart people to work in the renewable energy fields," MacDonald said. “Local engineers are inventing the technologies that help renewable energy flow efficiently on the nation's grid.”

MacDonald also founded the nonprofit CarbonTaxMe.org and is a member of a local chapter of the Citizens Climate Lobby. Both organizations support putting a tax or fee on carbon, to discourage its use, and returning the revenue to households.

Three products

Today, Solmetric manufactures three products to improve the installation and performance of solar systems.

The SunEye is a handheld device solar installers used to measure the amount of shade at any given location on a roof and at all times of the year, so they can design the most effective rooftop systems.

The PV Analyzer is a portable test instrument that measures the performance of solar arrays in large solar plants, a critical tool in maintaining electricity reliability.

The Module Lift, a new product, lets installers get solar panels quickly and safely up onto a roof.

Solmetric has sold 11,700 SunEyes and 2,200 PV Analyzers worldwide, MacDonald said. The company is profitable, with about $3.2 million in annual revenue, he said. Biggest challenges today are reorganizing after the buyout and managing through current supply chain problems.

The adventure begins

The Solmetric adventure began in 2005 when electrical engineer MacDonald took a voluntary severance from Agilent and talked his dad, entrepreneur Bob MacDonald, and software engineer Mark Galli into joining him to launch Solmetric with financial help from family.

It was also a pivotal year in Sonoma County’s climate awareness. That year, the county and its cities adopted a goal of reducing their annual greenhouse gas emissions about 1 million metric tons by 2015, a goal not met but since increased to about 3 million by 2030. So far, about half-million has been cut.

When Solmetric started, everyone worked for stock and they developed The SunEye shade measurement tool. Then in 2007, along came the California Solar Initiative, which had a goal of installing solar on 1 million roofs and required installers to make shade measurements.

"The million-roof California Solar Initiative was one of our lucky moments," MacDonald said.

In 2009, Solmetric moved to the current site in Sebastopol and developed the PV Analyzer in collaboration with Santa Rosa-based IQA, led at the time by former Agilent engineer Randy King. Solmetric was just launching a new funding round when Vivint Solar made an attractive buyout offer of $12 million.

"They bought Solmetric for our people, products and intellectual property, to gain a competitive advantage and prepare for their IPO,” said MacDonald.

Vivint acquired Solmetric in January 2014, and the Solmetric facility became known as Solar Labs within Vivint Solar. Employment at the Sebastopol plant grew to 25 engineers, scientists and assemblers, including MacDonald and Galli.

But over time, Vivint Solar became more focused on its core residential installation business than on Solmetric’s technology and hardware products. By October 2020, when Vivint Solar was acquired by Sunrun, the nation’s top home solar installer, MacDonald and Galli were already negotiating a buyout.

In August they bought 100% of the Solmetric stock for an undisclosed price, gave stock to each of their employees and contractors and sold some shares to help with working capital.

“It’s great to have the business back,” said Galli, 51. “We can develop our products to their full potential.”

Top producer

The top revenue producer for Solmetric today is its line of PV Analyzers, known in industry terms as I-V curve tracers. They are used by more than 100 companies in the U.S., and they’re in dozens of other countries, led today by India, Canada, Australia and Mexico, MacDonald said. The largest competitor is an Italian firm.

Companies that install large solar systems make promises about performance to the buyer and other parties in the deal, which may be large corporations, banks or utilities. At pivotal times, like at installation, or during later audits or troubleshooting, the PV Analyzer tests that performance and compares it to expectations.

“If a plant costs $10 million or $100 million, you can bet everyone wants to make sure it’s working exactly right,” said Santa Rosa engineer Paul Hernday, a key contributor to the development of the PV Analyzer and owner of PV Metrix that measures solar system performance.

About the buyout, Hernday said, “It’s a brave move, and it demonstrates their commitment to this field and their belief, a belief I share, that the industry is growing and diversifying and will have all kinds of new measurement needs in the future.”

MacDonald acknowledges that solar still has key issues that need to be solved, led by solar’s intermittency.

“Engineers will figure it out,” he said. “The main thing holding back renewable energy and climate solutions is the political will to do it,” he said.

Mary Fricker is a retired Press Democrat business reporter. She lives near Graton. Reach her at mfricker@sonic.net.