Kay Firor and Kent Osterberg at their home in Cove
I have a natural tribal affinity for PV off grid people. Longtime off grid PV installers are of a particular tribe, bonded by common experience and similar motivations. Kent Osterberg and Kay Firor of Blue Mountain Solar (www.bluemountainsolar.com) in Cove, Oregon are of such a tribe.
Following my first experience working with early off grid PV when I lived at Lama Foundation in far northern New Mexico in 1988-89, I wanted to make this then-little field of solar electricity my career. At first I thought I’d like to work with utilities as a real job, as I had little confidence that I had what it takes to go it on my own. I called PG&E, the largest utility in California and one of few doing anything with solar electricity, and was somehow routed to Kay. We met one day in the utility’s San Ramon, California offices, and she was gracious enough to offer her guidance, but there was little opportunity there. Perhaps a month later she called me up to ask me to prepare and present a primer on the basic technology of photovoltaics to an audience of utility engineers from all over the country. I did so for her, but neither of us even recalls where this occurred – perhaps in a hotel ballroom in Sacramento.
In doing so, she became my first-ever employer in my newly-chosen field. Kay was a genuine pioneer in the PV field. Just to put this in perspective: I took my first week-long PV training class in 1988, at Colorado Mountain College in Glenwood Springs. My teachers were Johnny Weiss, Ken Olsen and Steve McCarney, who went on to found Solar Technology International, which eventually became SEI, or Solar Energy International, now the best-known solar training resource in the country. Back then Kay had worked for several years at SERI, the Solar Energy Research Institute, which later became NREL, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. She recalled that two of my teachers at Colorado Mountain College went to a class she taught at SERI to learn the basics of the technology.
Kay and Kent met while at PG&E, as both were electrical engineers. Wanting a family but not one raised in suburbia, they settled over twenty years ago in the tiny town of Cove, Oregon, beneath the Blue Mountains, in a beautiful log home with horses, chickens, raspberries and blueberries. They also ran (and continue to run) a small solar installation business out of their home – one not large enough to support them by itself, but one that allows them to do work they both enjoy while Kent consults as an engineer and Kay teaches math at the local college.
They installed a batteryless grid-tied system at their home in 1991, a full ten years before Positive Energy installed its first system of that type, using a Pacific inverter which failed four times, followed by an Omnion which lasted for years, and finally a Sunny Boy when the industry finally caught up with them. They started with ten 180 watt Mobil Solar modules procured through Kay’s Lab contacts, replacing them a few years ago with Sharp modules with greater output.
I called Kay out of the blue and was welcomed to their home, spending two nights and a day enjoying their welcome hospitality. We swapped life-experience stories and talked shop about off grid clients and equipment.
I was invited to stay a second night at their home, and we had a lovely dinner in the larger town of LaGrande. I left Friday morning refreshed and invigorated.
To follow up on the preceding post, plan B looks as though it will work. I put nearly all of the gear in the Bob trailer and the bike handled well enough, riding both from Baker City to Cove and then on. It appears that I’ll be able to continue my bicycle tour, using the trailer to carry gear and limiting myself to road touring. I rode about twenty miles from their home to LaGrande. From there I hitchhiked to the Portland area, making my destination by nightfall. The hitching again went smoothly: first a state highway worker took me through a twenty-mile construction zone, then a young driver in a fully-loaded semi carried me to his destination in Pendleton asking all the way for guidance on how to travel on a bicycle. He’d like to take a leave of absence from his work as a long-haul operator to tour from Seattle to Morro Bay. My final ride took me all the way to the Portland area, with a gentle man who had retired from work at the state prison and was now heading to a memorial service on the coast. We stopped at a Columbia Gorge winery to taste their wines.
I am now at Don and Kelly’s home in Canby, Oregon, preparing to head up to the Seattle area for the next series of adventures, the that story will have to wait for the next post here. G’night.
Packin’ up at Kent and Kay’s home
At maximum zoom the image is a little fuzzy, but this was such an elegant new barn
Eastern Oregon farm mailbox