GREENFIELD — PV Squared is celebrating 20 years of making the future a little brighter.
The worker-owned solar design and installation company got off the ground in 2002 as the brainchild of Donald Campbell, one of the four founding worker-owners. It has since installed 1,719 projects throughout western and central Massachusetts and Vermont, producing 104 million kilowatt-hours of electricity — reportedly the equivalent of the greenhouse gas emissions from 16,164 passenger vehicles driven for one year and the carbon dioxide emissions from 82 million pounds of coal being burned.
Kim Pinkham, who is one of the other three founding worker-owners along with Philippe Rigollaud and Matt Sirum, said the initial plan was to start a solar module assembly plant. But a feasibility study concluded it would cost $20 million to $30 million to start a plant of that nature.
“But … an installation company could start on a shoestring (budget),” Pinkham explained. “There wasn’t much of a market at that. That seemed feasible with a small startup cost.”
Pinkham, who works as PV Squared’s accounts payable bookkeeper, said the company started to take off in 2005. There are now 24 worker-owners, with 25 other employees on track to an ownership share. The company occupies two sites — offices at 311 Wells St. and a warehouse at 319 Wells St.
Ben Clark, fourth-generation owner of Clarkdale Fruit Farms in Deerfield, said he picked PV Squared when his family was interested in installing solar panels six or seven years ago. The farm has a 60-panel, 19.6-kilowatt array on two barn roofs.
“We looked at two options and they were the clear choice,” he said, adding that he talked to other farmers who had used PV Squared and the company got rave reviews.
Clark, whose father Tom still actively works on the farm, said the panels are a 20- to 30-year investment.
For more information about PV Squared, visit pvsquared.coop.
Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 262.