Green Ox Energy

Our last presenter of day 2 was Mark Thompson from Green Ox Energy which is a commercial, residential, and renewable energy solutions provider based out of Dallas, Texas that makes solar energy more accessible and affordable to the public. The company takes a full service approach to the renewable energy process using multiple products, financial advice, installation services, and assistance throughout the process.


Deregulation is a fact of Texas electric companies in many areas. If you live in one of these areas you can choose your energy provider. In the past TXU used to be the only provider and the owned the entire process so they sent the energy and billed customers. During the deregulation, TXU was divided up into generation, distribution (Oncor), and retail. Now anyone can create an electric distribution or retail company but Oncor is still regulated by the government. 


In Texas, most of the power is generated from Coal, Nuclear, and some Natural Gas. Since Natural Gas is so easy to switch on and off it is used mostly as "quick fire" power when extra electricity is needed (such as early morning spikes in need). The issue with electricity is that currently, we can't store it, so it has to be deliver on demand. Another issue in Texas is that electricity is very dependent on water. Natural Gas and Nuclear plants use an immense amount of water for fracking and cooling; however, Texas has been in a drought since the late 90's which makes this process more difficult and expensive.

To assist in energy production in a more efficient and "green" way, Texas has implemented very large wind farms out West that pipe energy back into the populated areas. Due to these farms, Texas is now the largest wind energy producer in the nation. Another renewable power supply being used often in Texas is geothermal technology which runs fluid through pipes buried underground to regulate temperatures. This helps regulate the temperature of buildings and lower the need for heating and cooling.

After our tour at the BRIT, the class was very interested in solar energy. The electricity produced from a photovoltaic (PV) system is direct current so a converter is necessary. You do lose some of the electricity produced but it is a necessity. There are various grades of cells (A, B, C, etc) which function at various levels of efficiency, energy production, and cost. What we are seeing now is a focus on the quality of panels and the top quality companies are providing guarantees or insurance policies to assure people that their products are worth purchasing.


According to Mark, the life span of a panel is usually 25 years. After that it begins to degradate by 20% each year (depending on the quality of the cells). However can you imagine what the new solar panels will look like 25 years from now? If you use computer technology as a benchmark you can see how much cheaper, smaller, and efficient these solar panels will be in 25 years. By the time the current solar panels no longer work it may be easy to replace them with much more efficient and inexpensive panels. 

Panels can either be ground or roof mounting systems that are fixed or tracking models. The tracking models are unique in the way that they actually rotate to track with the sun and provide more energy. Residential systems are most often fixed units whereas the industrial or commercial systems use tracking more often. There are also new cells being used that look like roof tiles but at this point they are still very expensive. 

Green Ox works with customers to assess what they really want in terms of energy savings. Some people just want to cover 20% of their electricity costs but others are interested in being able to get "off the grid". These are very separate goals that will require a different investment and installation strategy. From a financing standpoint there are many state, federal, and company specific programs that provide rebates or grants that assist in paying for solar systems. However, if a company or person want this incentive money they will have to follow strict guidelines set forth by those groups. 

As Mark stated, there are no moral, religious, or ethical reasons why solar energy should not be a form of electricity production. The only setback is price. In order to reduce price the government and private companies will have to start providing more incentives and producing more systems to influence the market. I really hope that Texas begins focusing more on solar energy. It seems like a perfect fit for our state due to the amount of time we have clear skies with very direct sunlight. This would assist in reducing non-green forms of energy production and water usage by our nuclear and natural gas plants.