Week 31.

Left another productive week behind.

• We held our first solar education class (office hours) with HeatSpring. 
• Continued investment discussions with a number of solar companies and investors focused on the long-tail of industry.
• SolarAcademy launched its first Solar Entrepreneurship Course jointly with HeatSpring (a leading online learning platform for solar) and the University of Michigan Ann Harbor Entrepreneurship Center. Some articles about the course are here and here.
• Planned our trip to Turks & Caicos Island for our first Microgrid Project

To-do this week (same last week):

• SolarAcademy content planning
• Develop more solar classes (for resi & comm prop owners)
• Develop solar learning paths
• Develop open source methods for sharing the ins-and-outs of our ongoing solar projects.
• Work on re-design of SolarAcademy home page

Thoughts:

Open Source.

Open Source code and open collaboration methods have been around for decades. In the software industry that is. But such methods have not yet been applied to other industries in a substantial way. 

As we are starting our first microgrid project this week, I am thinking about how to bring some open source concepts to the solar energy and construction industry through SolarAcademy.

Our first project at the Turks & Caicos Island in the Caribbean will have many opportunities to start an “open source” movement in the solar industry. I am looking forward to seeing what will come out of our efforts on this first microgrid project that we will be leading.