About Us
It started as a party, and became a documentary on the birth of the solar PV industry.
"Solar Roots - the Pioneers of PV" is a documentary film that tells the true story of the birth of the industry. This non-commercial free-to-the-world documentary film project is the creation of coworkers and friends: Jeff Spies and Jason Vetterli. In 2015 they embarked upon a multi year adventure to document the stories of the history of the solar PV industry conducting over 50 interviews with dozens of pioneers including the who's who of those pioneers that took an obscure technology and turned it into a practical method to power homes and businesses around the world.
These interviews were primarily filmed in the backwoods communities that spurred the growth of the early home power PV industry. These stories have been edited into an entertaining film that is educational, funny, a bit scandalous, and truly inspiring to viewers. (See more below)
Meet The Team Behind The Documentary Film
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Our Story
How did this all start?
In 2015, I organized an event to reunite my "solar family" in a gathering to celebrate the birth of the PV industry and pay tribute to the brilliant men and women that worked for decades to make renewable energy a reality. The first "Solar Pioneer Party" took place in October 2015 in Humboldt County and was a huge success. More than 150 people attended, including a who's who of the industry's founders, as well as many of the younger generations of PV professionals. These people all shared a deep respect for the contribution of the pioneers. Words alone cannot describe how magical an experience it was having all those incredible people in one place at the same time.
Never before had so many solar pioneers gathered together for a social event that had no commercial content. I felt that someone should document the stories of these amazing people, and I contacted several industry journalists. Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful in getting anyone interested in conducting interviews with these amazing industry pioneers. After several attempts and eventual failures, I started to question if their stories would be documented. Not willing to let this opportunity pass by, I convinced my friend and talented videographer/co-worker Jason Vetterli to film interviews with the attendees. Without realizing it, Jason and I were about to undertake a two year project to create the first ever documentary film about how the solar PV industry started.
This first Solar Pioneer Party in Humboldt was so popular, attendees demanded an encore. Working with Backwoods Solar, we organized a second "Solar Pioneer Party" the next year in Grass Valley, CA. Even more of the industry pioneers attended and viewed a 20 minute teaser clip of the documentary footage. Everyone loved it!
In November 2017 we premiered the DRAFT ROUGH CUT VERSION of the documentary to great fanfare at the "Third and Final Solar Pioneer Party" in Mendocino County, California. It was a huge hit among the 330 attendees. After the Third and Final Solar Pioneer Party, Jason and I took a long overdue and well deserved break. We needed time to recover from the grueling pace of the past two years filming, editing, and producing of the documentary, and organizing of the Solar Pioneer Parties. What we thought would be a year or two break became five years thanks to Covid, but by 2023 we were back at work rewriting the script and editing the footage into the story we had originally envisioned. We feel folks will enjoy our final production as it carefully captures the events and the feeling of the start of the solar photovoltaics industry.
Our project will be coming to a culmination on October 25th, 2025 in Grass Valley when we debut the long anticipated public release of "Solar Roots - the Pioneers of PV". After the debut, we plan to make this film free-to-the-world. We believe this story needs to be seen by as many people as possible to help inspire others to increase awareness of sustainability and promote the magic of clean solar energy for the good of future generations.
We hope you will join us in Grass Valley in October to participate in cultural touchstone of the solar industry to hear the stories of our industry founders and celebrate the roots of the PV industry.
See you in Grass Valley!
Sincerely
Jeff Spies
