After a decade in the renewable energy business, Dori (Meeker) Wolfe ’82 still gets a charge watching the utility meter spin backward. There’s just something about knowing that sunlight is hitting an array of solar panels that she and husband Jeff Wolfe ’82 designed and installed, and generating electricity that feeds the local power grid. Known as net-metering, the strategy relies on an inverter that plugs their solar system into the utility’s network, eliminating the need to store electricity in expensive, bulky batteries. It’s the perfect strategy for people wary of going off the grid, and far easier for the suburban homeowner intent on keeping the full array of electrical conveniences.

Net-metering also has tremendous psychological appeal. This past summer, when a local television station covered groSolar, the Wolfes’ White River Junction–based company, the camera crew made sure to get a shot of Dori standing next to the meter as it made its way counter-clockwise. “We joke about it,” she says, “saying it’s our favorite Vermont pastime.”

The Wolfes spent the early decades of their careers consulting on the engineering of mechanical systems for large-scale conventional buildings. But both came of age during the Arab oil embargos of the ’70s, and each pursued mechanical engineering to enrich a personal interest in environmentally friendly energy solutions.

In the late 1990s, they quit their big-city jobs and moved to Vermont, where they founded their company—then Global Resource Options—to bring sustainability to design and renewable energy to a mass market. “I just got tired of project decisions where the three-year payback on the energy-efficient chiller doesn’t make the budget but nobody asks what the payback is on the marble tile,” says Jeff, who quips that he’s got nothing against marble tile. “It was time,” says Dori, “to stop making award-winning energy consuming buildings and instead design energy-producing buildings.”

Admittedly, neither had much business background, but they relied on Vermont values and common sense to build their company. The Wolfes also took a different tack from the competition. While most of the existing solar companies installed systems for off-grid homesteads in the backcountry, the Wolfes targeted suburbanites, adopting an auto dealer’s approach, complete with attractive financing and sophisticated pitches. “We decided if we’re going to sell solar energy, we’re going to market it the way everything else is marketed in the U.S.,” says Jeff. “It’s want, sex, and sizzle.” A current ad campaign highlighting the happiness and security of solar depicts a middle class family—complete with children blowing soap bubbles—lounging on their suburban lawn, solar panels prominent on the roof in the background.

Customers love the idea of having solar panels, but often, says Dori, it’s difficult to engage them in discussions of energy efficiency. Despite the company’s energy audits to determine array sizing—greater demand equals more panels and higher costs—suggestions of high-efficiency light bulbs or replacing an energy-hogging fridge often fall on deaf ears. “People always come back,” says Jeff, who says he never turns away a customer. “It might be a month later, it might be a year later, and they say, ‘My meter’s not spinning back fast enough. Can you help me out? What did you call those light bulbs?’”

In 2003, groSolar acquired warehouse space, took on wholesale distribution of components, and gradually increased their reach across the nation. Their largest installation to date is a Whole Foods store in Connecticut, and they are involved in one of the largest projects in California. To further expand their impact, groSolar has formed partnerships with 400 dealers from New Jersey to Oregon and opened ten offices across the United States and Canada, making it one of the leading independent U.S. solar companies today.

Central to groSolar’s success, says Wolfe, is its mission, which is based on the couple’s concerns about global climate change and America’s reliance on foreign fossil fuel as much as their desire to make money. “You can’t have profitability without social responsibility,” says Jeff. “We’re building this company for tomorrow, trying to grow the company as quickly as possible because we’ve got a problem to solve.”
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