Borrego Solar Systems Appoints Bill Bush Chief Financial Officer on the Heels of Record-Breaking Fourth Quarter
Press Release

20-Year Veteran Bill Bush Joins Leading Financier and Integrator of Commercial Solar Systems; Company Completes Record Fourth Quarter with more than $45 million in Contracts
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Rounding Up Staff Ideas
Inc. Magazine

Business owners are always on the hunt for new ideas -- ways to cut costs, increase revenue, and improve products and services. Often the most cost-effective source of ideas is right in front of you. "More companies are turning first to their employees to tap into those free ideas lying around in their heads," says Jeffrey Phillips of OVO, an innovation consulting firm in Raleigh, North Carolina. But what do you do when employees are too shy to speak up?That's the predicament in which Mike Hall found himself. Hall, the CEO of Borrego Solar Systems, an El Cajon, California, company that installs solar power systems, says many of his employees, especially the engineers, are introverted and were reluctant to come forward with ideas. "Other people just didn't see it as part of their jobs to speak up," says Hall.Last year, Hall decided to organize an internal contest he called the innovation challenge. All 50 of Borrego's employees were encouraged to submit ideas about improving the business. After everyone had a chance to review the submissions hosted on the company's intranet, employees used SurveyMonkey, a free online survey tool, to vote for their favorite idea. The prize for the winner: $500 in cash.The competition drew only a handful of suggestions, but nearly all of Borrego's employees participated in the voting process, which encouraged Hall to stick with it. He now holds the competitions quarterly and receives more than a dozen submissions per contest. Several of the winning ideas have already been put into place, such as using software to help the sales and engineering teams collaborate. Once employees began to see their suggestions being put into action, says Hall, participation increased. "We knew we had people who might be shy about submitting ideas," he says. "We gave them a forum that encourages everyone to share."With a standard suggestion box, employee ideas sent to management often seem to disappear into a black hole. Using technology to track and rank each submission can help ensure that every idea gets a fair shake. In the past few years, several companies, including Imaginatik, Spigit, and Brightidea, have launched applications designed for collecting, discussing, and ranking employee ideas. These programs look and function like a cross between Facebook and Digg. With Brightidea's software, for example, each employee has a profile that displays his or her ideas, the number of times he or she has commented on the ideas of others, and whether co-workers felt the ideas and comments were good ones. The program uses this information to tabulate scores for each employee and then ranks the top idea generators. The rankings are intended to create a spirit of competition that encourages participation. "Recognition from their peers is a powerful motivator for many people," says Murat Philippe, a consultant with HR Solutions, a workplace consulting firm in Chicago.Such systems are helpful when in-person meetings become awkward, whether because of introverted employees or a scattered work force. Fleishman-Hillard, a public relations firm with more than 2,000 employees and 80 offices around the world, began rolling out Brightidea's software to 150 of its employees in July. The software, which starts at about $15 per person per month, is a way for Fleishman-Hillard's dispersed staff members to pitch ideas together. "We used to brainstorm in face-to-face sessions using whiteboards and Post-it notes, which was a laborious process," says Kathie Thomas, a senior vice president at the company.No matter which system you use, you had better be prepared to turn employees' ideas into action. "There's nothing worse for morale than when employees feel like their ideas went nowhere," says Larry Bennett, a professor of entrepreneurship at the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University. Companies need to develop a process to bring those ideas to life. At Borrego, each idea that Hall wants to use gets assigned to an executive sponsor. Projects are often spearheaded by the person who made the suggestion, but if an idea is generated from outside a department -- for instance, if someone in engineering comes up with an idea for the marketing department -- a sponsor will be nominated. Employees can track the progress on the company's intranet.But Hall makes it clear to employees that the winning idea won't always be the first one implemented. After a recent competition, one of the runners-up was quickly put in place. The idea was to begin offering power-purchase agreements, which involves paying the upfront costs to install solar equipment at customers' locations and then charging them monthly for electricity. "We've been able to generate a lot of great ideas by tapping everyone's brains," he says.
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Borrego Solar Set To Install 5MW of PV in Pennsylvania
Renewable Energy World

Borrego Solar Systems Inc. announced a partnership with Reading Electric to install more than 5 megawatts (MW) of solar energy at 32 different local businesses across Southeastern Pennsylvania. These projects will greatly expand the solar capacity in the region and across Pennsylvania. At the end of 2008, the entire state had fewer than 5 MW of solar installed. To help offset the $30 million combined cost of these and the other 30 companies’ solar energy systems, Borrego Solar and Reading Electric have secured more than US $7.5 million in grant awards through the PA Sunshine Grant, a $100 million state fund administered by the PA Department of Environmental Protection. The grants awarded to these 32 customers represent approximately 25 percent of the solar energy grants awarded to businesses to date through the PA Sunshine program.Borrego Solar and Reading Electric also anticipate funding from the Federal Renewable Energy Grant Program totaling more than $9 million. To facilitate these 32 companies’ ability to enjoy the benefits of going solar, Borrego Solar has offered to “carry” both the PA Sunshine and Federal Grant portions of these projects’ costs until they are received, leaving customers with a more manageable out-of-pocket financial obligation and overall enhanced project economics.Borrego Solar also does not charge an interest cost for carrying the grant portions of the project. This approach represents a unique financial innovation and material incentive to these companies, enabling them to be at the leading edge of the development of commercial solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in Pennsylvania.For the 32 projects that Borrego Solar and Reading Electric have jointly developed, Borrego Solar anticipates taking responsibility for nearly $17 million in incentive receivables from the two main funding programs (PA and Federal Government).Last year Borrego made a move out of the residential solar market to focus on the industrial and commercial segments of the market. RenewableEnergyWorld.com talked to Mike Hall, CEO of Borrego about the move and what the market is like for installers. To watch the video at Renewable Energy World.com click the link below.
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Borrego Solar Systems Partners with Reading Electric to Bring More than 5 Megawatts (MW) of Solar Energy to Southeastern Pennsylvania
Press Release

READING, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Borrego Solar Systems, Inc., a leading designer and installer of grid-tied commercial and public-sector solar electric power systems, today announced a partnership with Reading Electric of Reading, PA to install more than 5 MW of solar energy—enough to power approximately 3,500 homes—at 32 different local businesses across Southeastern Pennsylvania, including Adelphi Kitchens & Cabinetry, Inc. (Robesonia, Pa.), Heyco Metals, Inc. (Reading, Pa.), Misco Products Corporation (Reading, Pa.), and Cougle’s Recycling, Inc. (Hamburg, Pa.). These projects will greatly expand the solar capacity in the region and across Pennsylvania. At the end of 2008, the entire state had fewer than 5 MW of solar installed.
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