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Thursday, October 22, 2009

Solar Firm Sees Bright Future


Copyright © 2009 Albuquerque Journal
By Michael Hartranft
Journal Staff Writer
      An Albuquerque company that develops lighting products integrating LEDs and solar technology is preparing to more than triple its work force and move into bigger quarters.
       Visible Light Solar Technologies plans to add 45 jobs over the next few months and will start moving Nov. 2 to a 32,000-square-foot building on Eagle Rock NE, CEO/president Dee Dennis said.
       The firm currently employs about 18 people and occupies 8,000 square feet in the Osuna Business Park.
       The company says it is the first commercial and industrial lighting company to create a retrofit hybrid solar device for interior and exterior fixtures. Since launching its Vector line of products in June, it has amassed back orders for 3,000 retrofit units to be delivered in the next three months, Dennis said.
       The governor's office also has announced the company will receive $221,250 through the state's Job Training Incentive Program to train 45 people. The program reimburses qualified companies for a significant portion of training costs associated with job creation.
       Forty of the new jobs will be manufacturing and assembly positions. The other five will be for the engineering technical support group.
       “We have a meeting this week with administrators of the program and will get that kicked off fairly quickly,” Dennis said. “We're eager. We're needing a work force.”
       Since June, the company has increased it sales staff by a person, hired a vice president of business development and the marketing group has grown by two people.
       “We're anticipating being around 60 by the first or second quarter next year,” Dennis said. “We've got a lot of product to manufacture.”
       The company promotes its products as low-maintenance, energy-saving alternatives to traditional high-intensity lighting that can save customers thousands of dollars. Its solar/LED hybrid draws power first from a solar-charged battery and then from the regular electric grid. The fixtures link the LEDs with the solar component's through a patent-pending Self-Powered Device Interface that combines custom hardware and software to control voltage fluctuations, switching between the solar battery and regular grid, and illumination levels.
       “We've added some new products that we will be launching in the next week that will change the retrofit environment,” Dennis said. “People who believe their existing interior lights can't be retrofitted into LEDs and make them more energy efficient will be able to do that with the next product line.”
       

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