Greening The Backshop

By K. Schipper

In the colors of business, there’s red and black– and, for some stone fabricators, a healthy shade of green.

Having a great product line – granite, marble and other stone — isn’t always enough to get noticed in today’s tough economic climate. Bringing sustainability concepts inside shop, though, can bring some reputation-boosting publicity and – for one shop owner – the ability to sleep better at night.

SOLAR SELL

LONGVIEW, Texas – Johnny Pickitt, owner of Premier Kitchens and Bath, is definitely ahead of the green curve.

At a time when many people are content to read about solar panels in the newspaper, he’s installed his second set of the electricity-making cells. And, while his main goal was cutting that monthly electric bill, he’s gotten quite a bit of positive publicity for his efforts.

Click photo to enlargePickitt explains that he’d been one of those reading about solar and wondering what he could do to make his business more energy-efficient. Finally, he decided to commit to trying out the panels to judge the efficiency.

“I started on our showroom, which is about 1,800 ft²,” he says. “We managed to cut our electric bill in half just with that. So, I started to wonder if we could upgrade our system and maybe power the whole shop.”

Pickitt acknowledges that he’s in a situation that’s probably unlike many shop owners. Not only is his showroom in a building separate from the shop; when he started going solar, he was in the process of adding on to his fairly new shop building.

Pickitt started the process of getting solar panels for his showroom in March 2009 and, not surprisingly, the hardest part was gathering the information to take it from concept to reality.

“We started researching it with a solar installation company (the locally-based Tejas Energy Solutions) just starting in business,” he says. “We worked together with them on this, and now we’re kind of a team.”

While Tejas has the panels to install, learning about the financial incentives available took a little additional work.