Kevin Dickson saw the future of solar technology early on. While most of his peers from the School of Mines pursued lucrative careers in the petroleum industry, Dickson rolled the dice on solar.

Dickson Bets On Solar – The Economically Sound Alternative
by Susan Dugan

Real estate developer and residential energy consultant Kevin Dickson cut his teeth on Denver real estate. “My mom was a real estate agent, and she told the story about how I would sit on her lap and say, ‘How much is your mortgage?’”

After graduating from South High School, the mechanically-inclined Dickson, reluctant to leave Colorado’s great skiing, earned a degree in physics from the Colorado School of Mines in 1977. “When I graduated, solar energy was coming on pretty strong,” he says. “Coming of age in the ‘70s, you got an awareness of energy issues.”

While most of his contemporaries from the School of Mines pursued lucrative careers in the burgeoning petroleum industry, Dickson bargained on solar. “I felt solar was going to be the next big thing,” he says. “And it should have been – but it was ignored for a while – and is only now finally coming back.”

Dickson pursued a master’s in mechanical engineering through Colorado State University’s solar engineering program, then headed by solar energy expert Dr. George Lof. “He’s really one of the pioneers in solar heating.” Dickson eventually worked for him as a product development and system design engineer at Solaron, one of the largest companies of its kind in the late 1970s, early 1980s. He also ran his own solar company, from 1979 through 1983.

“It was huge out here at that time,” he says. “Denver is really sunny and we were putting in a lot of systems for a while. I guess the industry wasn’t mature enough to provide enough reliability, and so solar thermal systems got a little bit of a bad name. Photovoltaic systems (converting light directly into electricity, using specially designed silicon cells) weren’t advanced enough and were too expensive.”

When the industry began dying off in 1983, Dickson took time off to travel to Australia and New Zealand before returning to Denver to take a position at Norgren, a worldwide industrial products company where he worked for the next 12 years, while indulging his passion for real estate on the side. In 1996, he retired to real estate full time. “It was a pretty good time in real estate, and I eventually had 120 rental units,” he says. Meanwhile, he kept current on developments in renewable energy, and in 2000 bought land on which to build his own solar dream home.

But the project had a rocky start. “I started calling old contacts and looking in the Yellow Pages and everywhere else for solar architects, and I really couldn’t find one,” he says. Undeterred, he decided to design the home himself. “Building your own house is a hassle, but I couldn’t have gotten the house I wanted otherwise.” He drew up plans in 2002 but did not receive permits until 2003. “I was using SIPS (structural insulated panels) for the walls, and the Denver Building Department wasn’t familiar with them and required extra engineering. My SIP supplier wasn’t dong a good job giving them the documentation, so it was painful getting going.”

Completed in 2004, the new home began paying off right away. “The first winter, we spent $80 on heat,” he says. “And when we converted to photovoltaic in 2006, our bills dropped to $50 a month. Because of new regulations implemented in 2006, Xcel will pay for half of the cost of your photovoltaic system. And instead of generating heat, we’re generating electricity and putting it back on the grid. The incentive is working. You can see a lot of people in this neighborhood have installed it. It’s approaching 10 percent in Wash Park. And the more things go up, the more you save.”

Dickson’s home (featured in the 2008 Wash Park Home Tour to benefit Steele Elementary School, attended by his two children), is located at the south end of the block, allowing unrestricted solar access with little to no shading. The large south-facing windows support passive solar that keeps the interior temperature an average of 65 degrees year-round.

The house also features minimized north windows to save heat in winter, and east and west windows to reduce heat gain in summer. South window glazing maximizes winter heat gain. Stained concrete floors store daytime heat for night. Other attributes include an energy reducing indoor-mounted evaporative cooler, medium-high efficiency boiler for in-floor radiant backup heat and domestic hot water, and a garage roof-mounted photovoltaic system.

Along with a partner, Dickson has been busy acquiring and redeveloping homes on the solar model. “The custom home business is tough. At least one in three architect/owner relationships fall apart. Homes should be built by developers who build what they think the market wants. That way, the homebuilder doesn’t have to get involved in choosing the 10,000 parts that go into a house. So we’re designing and building homes that will be zero energy.”

An avid cyclist, Dickson also devotes his time to improving local bicycle access to bike paths and light rail stations. “If you bike regularly, you soon find you’re much faster than cars and buses at rush hour,” he says. “The Platte River Greenway would be the world’s best commuter bikeway if there was better access from the Platt Park and University Park (neighborhoods), which beg for an Iliff bridge from Iliff and Delaware to connect with the bridge over the river. I’m participating in what’s called the Evans (light rail) Station Area Plan to make that happen.”

Dickson, who has created a blog, http://greenbuildingindenver.blogspot.com/, to advance his support for, and strong opinions about, low- and zero- energy home design and construction in Denver, says he isn’t a fan of traditional green politics that advocate passing laws favoring alternative appliances over conventional, for example. “Market forces combined with lots of consumer education will produce the best results,” he says.

But he’s practical enough to get behind what makes the most sense. His blog cites a Berkeley, California law that enables the city to reimburse homeowners for installing rooftop photovoltaic solar, adding it to their property taxes, and deducting payment over time. “With a financing scheme like that, there really aren’t any barriers to PV ownership. The yearly savings on your electricity bill are instantly larger than the property tax increase.”

For this self-proclaimed Republican scientist, who says he didn’t believe in global warming until 10 years ago, passive solar building is still first of all about the economics. And he’s more than a little relieved to know the gamble he made three decades ago is finally paying off.