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The Company We Keep

Dear Reader,
This blog is now an archive. John Abrams (Founder of South Mountain, author of this blog, and a book of the same name) retired on December 31, 2022. All posts published up until this date are preserved below.

For updates on John's next chapter, visit abramsangell.com.

For updates on South Mountain's second act, subscribe to our newsletter using the form below.

Environment

The PV Diaries

September 14, 2020 by John Abrams 2 Comments

As our primary sales contact these past 45 years, I have known every one of South Mountain’s clients. And I have usually known them well.

Until 2007, that is, when we began to install solar systems for people other than our design/build clients. At that time, Energy Technology Director Rob Meyers became the primary solar contact, shepherding hundreds toward clean, renewable, power. In those 13 years, we have installed roughly 500 systems for homes, businesses, and landfills across the island. Many of their owners I have never met.

Five years ago, I asked John Guadagno, our Energy Technology Project Manager, to alert me – from time to time – when he turns on new systems, so I could gain a sense of who we are working for and how their projects went. And so he began to email brief vignettes about client and job. Occasionally – very occasionally, unfortunately – I find the time to follow up on them personally. More often I run into people at Cronig’s or elsewhere who approach me and say, “You installed a solar system on my house!”

“Oh, amazing,” I respond, “thanks for saying. How’d it go?”

Invariably they gush.

Recently I read a post from JG and thought, “This is a remarkable record of the human side of doing business. I think I’ll look back, pull some up, and re-read.”

They seemed worth sharing; here are just a few of many:


8/17/15
Today I turned on the 14.7 kW roof mounted solar array at MV Shipyard. For me personally, this was the most enjoyable system to turn on. I have been talking about solar with Phil Hale (the former owner) since the 90’s. Phil has been wanting to do this for nearly 40 years. It is almost fitting that his son, James Hale (now President of MV Shipyard), led the charge. They are very happy. As you know, I really like happy clients. As you also know, these guys are both great friends.
[NOTE: Before coming to South Mountain, JG worked at the MV Shipyard for nearly a decade.]


Photo by Gabrielle Mannino.

5/1/17
Polly Hill PV2 – they are addicted! Another 24.85 kW added to the existing 10.46 kW we installed in 2013. They built a new Education center. We installed 12.4 kW on this new building and 12.4 kW on the existing “Cow Barn” building next door. Great clients. When I arrived to provide the walk through there was a crowd of maybe 15 Polly Hill employees. Lots of interest and great questions.


5/1/17
Lin Gallant – 9.66 kW roof mounted at their house in Vineyard Haven. Lin is a structural Engineer, has worked on many solar projects, and has built a new house in VH. He came to us for a HERS rating and consultation with Marc. Lin has turned out to be a great client. Very happy with his installation. We hired him to look at Cottle’s for PV. He will relocate to the Island with his wife and two young children soon. I hope we can work with him in the future.
[NOTE: This was the beginning of an important relationship. After Lin and family moved to the Vineyard, he quit his off-island job and came to work full time at SMCo, where he has brought the structural engineering discipline in-house, helping to integrate our design/build process more than ever.]


6/6/18
Today I turned on a 3.9 kW roof mounted array for Geneva and Calvin Corwin in Vineyard Haven. Geneva found a path for Cape Light Compact to pay for her entire solar array! She is so lovely, with two little ones running around their newly expanded home.
[NOTE: Cape Light Compact partnered with the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center in 2018 to offer grants covering the cost of solar on affordable housing. That grant program is no longer available.]


6/13/18
Yesterday I turned on a 5.76 kW roof mounted array for Primo at his house in Vineyard Haven. Fellow co-workers are some of my favorite systems to do. We are so psyched for Primo and his sweet new home.
[NOTE: Primo Lombardi is an SMCo employee and co-owner. We have installed 24 systems on the homes of employees and former employees.]


7/26/18
Today, I met Jim Feiner and Deb Dunn at their home in Chilmark. I turned on their array last week and met them today for a tutorial walk through of their new 7.92 kW ground mounted solar array. They were very excited. Deb said she has been thinking about this for over 15 years.



10/31/18
Yesterday, I met Sean Conley and Teri Mello at their Aikido Dojo (next to their house) in West Tisbury. They ‘flipped the switch’ while I provided a tutorial walk through of their new 7.85 kW roof mounted solar array. Sean has been a life-long Aikido student and now teaches youngsters. He rallied the community to help design and build this DoJo in the early 80’s. You may recognize one of the Harcourt brothers hanging (to right) in the trusses. Sean and Teri are thrilled.


11/30/19
On Wednesday I met Bill Connolly at his home in Edgartown. I ‘flipped the switch’ and provided a tutorial walk through of his new 17.28 kW roof mounted solar array. I met him late in the afternoon before the holiday and we struggled to get his monitor going. It took me about 30 minutes to discover his iPad was so old it did not support the Solar Edge App. His son was visiting for the Turkey holiday and quietly asked if Dad needs a new iPad. Bill emailed me on 11/29 to say he got a new one and the monitoring is fantastic!


6/23/20
Yesterday, I met Ann Lees at her home in Chilmark. I ‘flipped the switch’ and we sat outside while I provided a tutorial walk through of her new 5.76 kW roof mounted solar array. Ann was so lovely to work with (yes I know, broken record). We spoke several times over the phone through the process and yesterday we finally met in person. She is a long time seasonal resident and her husband remembers Hoppy (I think that was what we called your dad?). Ann and her late husband were both physicians. Long ago her husband worked with your dad in CA. She was thrilled to work with South Mountain and noted the whole team from Rob on down did not disappoint!
[NOTE: My Dad, who died in 2016 at the age of 95, was always called Hoppy by friends and family.]


7/17/20
On 6/24/20 I met Alex Morrison at his and Maggie’s new home in Edgartown. Alex ‘flipped the switch’ while I provided a tutorial walk through of their new 14.4 kW roof mounted solar array. Alex and Maggie are three-peat solar clients. We were all thrilled to work with them again and the install – which happened during the early stages of COVID – went smoothly.



7/17/20
Yesterday, I met Scott Stephens and Penny Uhlendorf at their home in Vineyard Haven and provided a tutorial walk through of their new 5.04 kW roof mounted solar array. They are great folks and thrilled with their experience and new solar array.
[NOTE: Scott and Penny own a house – one of my favorites – that we designed and built for Sally Coker (now deceased) maybe 30 years ago.]

That’s a sampling of JG’s reports. Some people consider solar panels and systems to be a commodity. These brief stories say something different – they show the personal side of these transactions, for our clients and for us. They speak of connections between people in our company and those we serve, connections that often last for decades.

We are grateful to our incredible energy technology team – Rob, Faren, JG, Phil, and John M – and to the others who support them – from our engineering team to our admin team, to our trade partners. It takes a village. From the outside, it would be hard to imagine how complex each of these projects are – from sales cycle to site assessments, from policy work to financing, from permitting to installation, from commissioning to long-term monitoring and maintenance.

As Rob and the team constantly improve this process, it becomes more efficient, effective, and client-centric. Systematization does not make it any less human, only more, and all work together to stay one step ahead of the ever-shifting solar policy landscape.

We are grateful, as well, to our clientele, the ones I’ve met and the ones I haven’t. They make this impact-driven work rewarding and meaningful.

Filed Under: Energy, Environment, Martha's Vineyard, Small Business

Local Sustainable Economies…And Way More Than That

July 17, 2017 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

My colleagues and fellow owners Deirdre, Rob, Siobhán and I just returned from a conference in Boston called Local Sustainable Economies. It was a national gathering, hosted by the Sustainable Business Network of Massachusetts, of people and organizations working to localize economic activity and encourage the long haul shift from the extractive economy of the present to a generative economy of the future.

Read More about Local Sustainable Economies…And Way More Than That

Filed Under: Climate Change, Design, Economic Crisis, Energy, Environment, Long Term Thinking, Martha's Vineyard, News, Politics, Small Business, South Mountain Company Tagged With: alliance bernstein, clean energy, fossil fuel, local sustainable economies, solar, solar power

Earth Day SunPower & SMCo Series Conclusion

April 25, 2017 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

SunPower’s final blog post about its collaboration with SMCo is focused on our commercial and affordable housing solar projects.

That’s it for this series, just in time for Earth Day 2017, which comes just in time for the planet. In “How The Active Many Can Overcome the Ruthless Few,” Bill McKibben says “We’ll either save or doom the planet during the Trump administration.” Today scientists will march on the National Mall. A week later, on Trump’s 100th day, there will be another major Climate Change march in Washington. Scientists are angry. People are angry. McKibben says, “Trump has pissed people off, and pissed-off people don’t ask for small and easy progress. They demand the shifts that reality requires.”

Now is the time. As the SunPower series demonstrates, we can effectively do what we have been unable to do in the past. The shift to renewables is underway, un-stoppable and irreversible, but time is the big variable. How fast, how soon, how much?

Link to the SunPower blog post here. Onward.

mv3-commercial-install

Filed Under: Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Martha's Vineyard, Politics, South Mountain Company Tagged With: cronigs, earth day, earth month, Martha's Vineyard, solar power, SunPower

SunPower: There’s More

April 25, 2017 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

For the Earth Day campaign mentioned in the last post, SunPower created two videos and three blog posts. This link will take you to their second video and second blog post. Please take the journey to explore the SunPower/South Mountain relationship further. This one is about the connection between our devotion to craft and our passion for solar. The two go hand in hand.

We’ll send out another reminder when the 3rd SunPower blog post is up. Thanks for listening!

17_RESI-201_EarthBlog2-Social-Images-Twitter-2

Filed Under: Design, Energy, Environment, Martha's Vineyard Tagged With: clean energy, Deep Energy Retrofits, earth day, earth month, Martha's Vineyard, solar, SunPower

Tracking our Carbon Footprint

July 1, 2014 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

The piece below was written for and posted on the Green Building Advisor.  I thought I’d share it here too.

We like to measure how we’re doing in as many ways as possible.  Like other businesses, we have a collection of metrics for financial tracking: profit and loss, budget projections and actuals, job costing of each project, value of our several funds (pension, equity, and reserves) and more.

We also measure social factors:  employee education costs, compensation ratio top to bottom, length of employee tenure, average employee age, charitable contributions, and community service.

We consistently track (measure) our work backlog to help us plan for our immediate future.

We try to predict our longer-term future, too – through strategic planning, creating five year plans, projecting organizational charts, and making succession plans.

In design and project planning, we do extensive measuring (space planning, engineering) to ensure good building performance, structure, and utility.  On our completed projects, we monitor energy use and other factors (like relative humidity) to help us learn what works and what doesn’t.

Read More about Tracking our Carbon Footprint

Filed Under: Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Martha's Vineyard, Small Business, South Mountain Company Tagged With: carbon footprint, Green Building Advisor, life cycle assessment

A Bright Investment (& Stop ‘n Shop Update)

June 13, 2014 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

The postscript to my last blog entry about Stop and Shop is that they withdrew their application!  They heard the concerns, saw the writing on the wall, and pulled back.  Our hope is that they will come back with a new plan that more addresses the wishes of Vineyarders and works for them too.

*                                   *                                   *                                    *

The following is a re-print of a piece Nis Kildegaard wrote for his Sounding column after a long chat with Rob Meyers, our Energy Services Manager.  It appeared in the Martha’s Vineyard Times on June 5th.  I thought he did a fine job with it.

 

A BRIGHT INVESTMENT

Maybe you never heard the news about solar power, or it was drowned out by the noise of the 13-year controversy over the Cape Wind project on Horseshoe Shoal.

But if you still think that putting solar electric panels on your roof is a prohibitively costly way to declare your environmentalist bona fides, it’s time to think again.

I sat down for an eye-opening tutorial last week with Rob Meyers at South Mountain Company (SMC) in West Tisbury. Meyers is manager of the company’s fastest-growing department, energy services. Here’s some of what I learned.

Read More about A Bright Investment (& Stop ‘n Shop Update)

Filed Under: Energy, Environment, South Mountain Company Tagged With: Cape Wind, Eliakim's Way, Green Communities Act, Jenney Way, Martha's Vineyard Times, Nis Kildegaard, NSTAR, South Mountain Company, SunPower

Vineyard Controversies

May 7, 2014 by John Abrams 2 Comments

Most of the time, there are one or two raging controversies on the Vineyard.   The last few years, however, have been quiet.  The only polarizing conflict was a roundabout in the center of the island.  I never understood that one; it really didn’t matter much either way.  I thought it would be fine to have a roundabout, but I thought it would be fine not to, as well.  What’s the big difference?

Now it’s built.  It’s fine.  I like it.  Nobody really cares that much, as far as I can tell.  So be it.

But now there are two big controversies, and both seem important to me.  One is the Squibnocket Beach parking and access re-design in Chilmark.  The beach and its parking lot, and an adjacent roadway that is the only access to a number of valuable properties, are threatened by coastal erosion.

The town selectmen, together with the property owners, a land conservation non-profit, and coastal biology and geology experts, have fashioned a unique partnership and plan.  The plan has generated intense controversy.  I don’t know if it’s a good plan, or the best plan, but it makes sense to me.

Nobody knows what the precise outcome will be, but something is going to happen, because it must – it’s in everybody’s interest to solve this problem.  I’m particularly interested in the outcome because it foreshadows many such efforts to come.  This is about climate change adaptation and mitigation.  It is the future, right now.

The other big controversy is the efforts of Stop and Shop and its parent company, Ahold, to significantly expand their shabby downtown supermarket in Tisbury.  There are many issues – scale, congestion, community character, the need to raise the building to stay above the flood zone now and in the future  – and the debate has become highly emotional.  My knowledge about this plan is limited too, and I haven’t been inclined to wade into the  sea of accusations, wild inaccuracies, and finger pointing.

But then I read a letter in the paper from Henry Stephenson, the co-chair of the Tisbury planning board, a good thinker with a broad design background.  He quietly suggested important ways to make it a much better project.  His solutions rang true, and I had also been noticing something missing from the debate, so I wrote the following to our regional planning agency, the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, which is the primary regulatory decision-maker for the project,  and to the local papers:

It’s hard to imagine anyone who cares more about Tisbury than planning board co-chairman Henry Stephenson.  He thinks deeply about the town and he has a nuanced and practical sense of design.  His Stop and Shop letter several weeks ago was right on the mark, in my view.  

No hyperbole, no careless inaccuracies – just the most cogent and thoughtful alternative plan to date.

I hope the Martha’s Vineyard Commission will heed his specific suggestions about decreasing building size, increasing setbacks, re-designing the municipal parking lot, Water Street congestion, Union Street traffic flow, and added transportation services.  I hope the MVC will condition the project in the realistic ways he suggests.

I also want to call attention to something that has been sadly absent from the Stop and Shop discussion.  The Martha’s Vineyard Commission has a responsibility to promote appropriate economic development.  I hope the MVC will add to its conditions – if and when it approves a better, scaled down version of the plan that is before it – that Stop and Shop will be required to provide full time jobs with full benefits at Living Wages.  

We need good jobs.  Part-time jobs at low wages are harmful and unprincipled.  Stop and Shop and its parent, Ahold, can afford decency.  It is within the powers of the MVC to require such decency.  And we cannot afford to accept less.  Thank you.

I hope this letter brings support to Henry’s excellent suggestions and, at the same time, opens up a new – and very important – topic of discussion.

But aside from the particulars of these controversies, there are two things I particularly like about both of them.

First, it’s the passion.

The downside of passion is that it can bring out hostility – people attack, personalize, demonize, distort, and falsify.  But that’s part of the deal, part of the inherent messiness of democracy.

The upside of passion is that it brings people out.  People put themselves on the line.  I recently watched a good talk called Why Your Critics Aren’t the Ones Who Count, by Brene Brown, a researcher and author who studies vulnerability, courage, worthiness, and shame. She is the author of The Gifts of Imperfection (2010) and Daring Greatly (2012).

In it she says, in part, “Show up.  Be seen.  Be brave.  If you do show up, in the arena, there’s one guarantee:  You will get your ass kicked.  That’s the only certainty. “  My experience over decades bears that out.  Brown goes on to say that “if you’re not in the arena, getting your ass kicked like I am, then I’m really not interested in your feedback.”

Along with “showing up”, she honors the importance of vulnerability.  She points out that vulnerability is the gateway to love, belonging, joy, trust, empathy, innovation, and creativity.  Without vulnerability, she says,  you can’t create.  We need to enter the arena, and we need not hide our vulnerability.

I like seeing so many entering the arena, warts and all.

The other thing that interests me is the essential importance of the issues at stake.  In the scheme of things, these are minor controversies in small towns.  But they both have elements of two of the great issues of our time – climate change and income inequality.

Climate change is certain to test our democracy in ways we can’t foresee.  Nobody will be un-affected, nobody will be able to stand on the sidelines.  That much is clear, and here are two examples of the issues, in a nutshell, in our small outpost.  Such examples, close to home, may promote greater engagement in the larger arena of public policy that our future depends on.

And two sides of the income inequality issue are visible in these controversies.  At Squibnocket, land owners are showing what’s possible when it serves all interests for the wealthy to enter into public-private partnerships.  At Stop and Shop, we see a major multi-national affecting a small community in ways that corporations do, and the community exercising its will to make sure that local benefits come first.

In her book The Sixth Extinction, author Elizabeth Kolbert says,  “Chimps are smart, and can do all kinds of clever things, but they don’t have collective problem solving ability.  You’ll never see two chimps carrying something together.  Only humans do that stuff.”

Whatever the outcomes, Squibnocket and Stop and Shop are vibrant examples of humans fully engaged in collective problem solving.  Doing that stuff.  Good stuff.

 

 

 

Filed Under: Climate Change, Collaboration, Design, Environment, Martha's Vineyard, Politics Tagged With: Ahold, Brene Brown, Climate change, Daring Greatly, Elizabeth Kolbert, Gifts of Imperfection, Henry Stephenson, income inequality, living wage, Martha's Vineyard Commission, Sixth Extinction, Stop and Shop, Suibnocket Beach

Measuring our Carbon Footprint

December 9, 2013 by John Abrams 4 Comments

Whenever possible at SMCo, we like to measure how we’re doing.  Like other businesses, we have a collection of ways to measure our financial progress – profit and loss, annual budget projections and actuals, cost tracking of each of our projects, value of our several funds (pension, equity, and reserves) and more.

We consistently track (measure) our work backlog to help us plan for our near-term future.

We also measure social factors:  employee education costs, compensation ratio top to bottom, length of employee tenure, average employee age, charitable contributions, and community service.

We try to predict our longer-term future, too – by doing strategic planning, creating five year plans, projecting organizational charts, and making succession plans.

Read More about Measuring our Carbon Footprint

Filed Under: Energy, Environment, Small Business, South Mountain Company Tagged With: carbon footprint, life cycle assessment, zero energy buildings

A Family, a Company, a Property, a Time

July 22, 2013 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

We just completed an addition to a house we built 17 years ago.  But not just any addition to any house we built 17 years ago.  It was part of a remarkable continuum of projects and part of the story of our relationship with a  family and their large property.

It began in 1996 when Roy and Diana came to us after purchasing an 80 acre parcel in Chilmark that stretched from North Road to the Vineyard Sound.  There was an old farmstead near the road consisting of a pre-revolutionary cape, a garage, and a cottage built in the 1930’s.  It was a mile drive down the twisting dirt road to the Vineyard Sound, where there is a lovely cove, a sandy beach, and a small tucked-away camp with an outhouse and a pitcher pump.

Our clients wanted a single house to accommodate their large family in the immediate future and a master plan to make houses for their four children over time.

The property is long and narrow.  The road ran along the edge, next to an adjoining development.  Except for the original farmstead near the road and the beach area, the property was overgrown and inaccessible.  As we began to investigate, we discovered that it is far more dramatic than we initially thought:  there is a series of deep ravines and some wonderful high spots with potential for wonderful views across the Vineyard Sound to the Elizabeth Islands.

During the next several years we worked closely with landscape designer Sanford Evans.  We explored, we mapped, we envisioned.

Read More about A Family, a Company, a Property, a Time

Filed Under: Collaboration, Design, Energy, Environment, Martha's Vineyard, South Mountain Company Tagged With: Chilmark, Deep Energy Retrofit, Nakashima, net energy producer

Victory at Hand

May 2, 2013 by John Abrams 1 Comment

Spring has sprung.  It’s a good time for good news.

When Paul Gilding’s book The Great Disruption was published in 2011 it had a profound impact on me.  In September of that year I wrote that it was, for me, the most accessible and full-bodied treatment to date of the effects of climate change on our planet, our economies, our lives.

Still is – although Gus Speth’s superb new book America the Possible is a knock-out that in many ways expands the vision further.

Gilding has a blog called “The Cockatoo Chronicles.”  It has been inactive for some months, but recently he made up for lost time when he posted a 2500 word essay that argues for a new reality:  the economy is now aligned with the environment and there is evidence that we can – and will – win the climate change battle.

That’s a big thing to say.

Read More about Victory at Hand

Filed Under: Climate Change, Economic Crisis, Environment Tagged With: 350.org, America the Possible, Grist, Gus Speth, Paul Gilding, The Cockatoo Chronicles, The Great Disruption

From Landfill to Power Plant

March 20, 2013 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

Mostly, capped landfills remind me of the mausoleums of a consumer society.  For most of a century we dumped our solid waste onto these Mt Trashmores and mixed up a brew of concentrated toxins which seeped into the surrounding areas and often polluted (and still do) our water.  So we learned to treat our waste as a resource, close the landfills, cap them, and leave them idle.  We’re still very primitive about this, but progress is steady.

There’s not much you can do on a capped landfill because it’s essential that we not disturb the protective rubber liner that is usually only 12-18” below the grass that covers it.

But there are some uses.  Most are relatively passive:  cultivation of hay, green space, wildlife habitat, and biking/walking/running trails.  Some are more active:  golf courses, baseball fields, and soccer fields.

Read More about From Landfill to Power Plant

Filed Under: Energy, Environment, Martha's Vineyard, South Mountain Company Tagged With: Adam Wilson, Aquinnah, Derrill Bazzy, Jim Newman, Nantucket, Paul Pimentel, Rob Meyers, South Mountain Company, SunPower, Vineyard Power

For Better Or Worse

June 21, 2010 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

Several weeks ago my old friend Marc Rosenbaum arrived on Martha’s Vineyard.  He often arrives on Martha’s Vineyard.  For 20 years this distinguished, nationally recognized building performance engineer has been arriving here to consult with us – to help us make better buildings. For 30 years he has been responsible for some of the most advanced buildings in New England.

When he arrived here last Tuesday, it was different than most times. 

Read More about For Better Or Worse

Filed Under: Climate Change, Design, Energy, Environment, Martha's Vineyard, South Mountain Company Tagged With: Alex Wilson, Energysmiths, Environmental Building News, Island Cohousing, Marc Rosenbaum, Martha's Vineyard, South Mountain Company

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