Solar: What Would Steve Jobs Do?

A few month ago I explored what Thomas Edison would have done if he had solar, wind and biomass electricity generation options to choose from as well as the coal and steam generated electricity that were Edison’s only options at the turn of the 20th century.

It was an informative exercise to take the forward-thinking style of a genius like Edison and run the scenario for the development of the Solar industry according to his way of thinking. It also seemed like a good idea this time to take a modern business hero and a strong systems thinker like Edison, Steve Jobs, and ask the same question to see what big ideas it may lead us to.

If Steve Jobs had chosen to invest his time and energy in electricity production instead of the personal computer, what would he have done?

Quite naturally he would have chosen Solar instead of going the route of big coal/nuclear or gas generation because as with the personal computer, that would have put the power of generation in the hands of individuals according to his vision of creating “tools for people who think different”

Having made that fundamental decision not to follow the crowd, he would then have looked at solar and asked how to make it the best it possibly could be. To start with he would have figured out how to switch the home off the grid so that in the event of a power outage, the solar system would not be shut off as well and would keep delivering electricity to the home.

There would be no “Solar Panels” that need to be separately wired and connected to inverters, mounted onto racks and the racks mounted to the roof. All of this would have been integrated into a single system that would only require at most 4 bolts to attach when it arrived at your home. That would have been one of the first things to change and that would have brought down the cost of solar instantly from a day to 2 days on site to a couple of hours. The majority of the assembly having been done fast and cheaply by robots in a factory, not hand made at your house! This is no small gain. Almost half the cost of a solar system is in the installation costs as it uses cheap, relatively unskilled labor to do that part of the job. The savings could be in the order of 30-40 percent at least.

 Inside you would have a device somewhat like the nest, but a lot more sophisticated. Yes, it would learn your preferences, but would probably do so in every separate area or zone of the home so that it could distinguish which members of the family were home at what times, including your pets.

While these are interesting product improvements Jobs would have made, the most important would have been the difference he would have made in presenting the idea of Solar as COOL Technology and the “must have” thing every year. He would do a solar presentation and introduction of the latest greatest product every year, drumming up support and building demand for it in the general population. No one would be able to say they did not know about solar and why it is so great. Bono would write a song about the power of the sun and perform at the presentation once in a while adding yet another layer of cool, but more importantly getting solar roofs as an idea, a vision of what could be, out to a much broader and younger audience.

Knowing that the actual power consumption of all of the devices in your home determine the size of system that you need, Jobs would probably change the plugs on his system so that if manufacturers wanted to run their products in a home with an Apple Solar system, they would need to comply to the Apple open standard and produce more efficient products before they could “plug in” … and they probably all would comply as that eco-system became the dominant one to follow, never mind the one with the highest margins!

The system would look so cool, you would instantly know who the progressive families in the Neighborhood were and kids would be begging their parents to get an Apple Solar system. Probably the way this would happen is that there would be no ordinary roof. The Apple Solar system would be the roof, thus reducing the cost of the solar system even more as it would replace the amount that would have to be spent on a roof. For sure there would-be built-in ventilation systems in the ridge for the summer to keep air flowing through the roof and the home cooler in the summer while closing in the winter to keep it warmer. Hardly rocket science you say, but still not many homes have such a system today.

Solar is a $2 trillion market in the US alone. It is MUCH more than the personal computer, tablet and the cell phone markets combined. Can you imagine what type of research and development an Apple type company run by a Jobs type leader would put into innovating a market that is throwing off the type of positive cashflow that a $2 trillion market would enable?