It was April 2006, and the mood was celebratory at Napa Valley College. A crowd had assembled to toast the school’s new solar field—5,600 photovoltaic panels arranged in neat rows across 5 acres of floodplain the school said couldn’t be used for much else beyond hay cultivation.
Solar installations are ubiquitous now, appearing on desert plains, winery properties, and carports. In 2006, they looked like the future. Rep. Mike Thompson addressed the onlookers that day, calling the project “a model and inspiration.” Then two students flipped a symbolic power switch, marking what was seen as the beginning of a new energy era for the campus.
At the time, the photovoltaic array was the fifth largest in the United States. The system could generate about 1.2 megawatts of power—roughly 40% of the campus’ electricity needs—with panels that automatically pivoted with the sun. Officials estimated it would shave about $300,000 a year from PG&E bills.
Napa Valley College (NVC) proudly featured the solar field on the cover of its 2005-06 Report to the Community. Accolades followed. A Korean TV crew came to film a segment in spring 2007, and the 2007-08 Napa County Grand Jury report commended the college for the solar installation as well as a new cooling system that worked by circulating chilled liquid, saying both could serve as national models for reducing emissions.
Some reports predicted a 25-year lifespan for the system. Others said 30. But roughly 15 years after that ribbon-cutting moment, the panels went dark. They now sit idle and overgrown with weeds.
### What happened to Napa Valley College’s $7.5 million solar field?
The answer points to a public institution unable to keep pace with a rapidly evolving industry and offers a cautionary tale for other energy innovators navigating the turbulent world of solar power.
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### The Early Years
The project began with Measure N, a $133.8 million bond approved by voters in November 2002 to upgrade campus infrastructure, including a new library, performing arts center, and life sciences building. Among its goals: the installation of a photovoltaic system to reduce the school’s reliance on utility power.
By 2005, NVC had hired Berkeley-based solar energy company PowerLight to design and build the system at a cost of $7.5 million—$4 million from Measure N bond funds and $3.5 million from PG&E incentives. It was a full turnkey project, with PowerLight handling the engineering, procurement, and construction, then selling the completed system outright to the college once it was commissioned. Installation was completed the following year.
“*There may be like 100 people who understand this stuff. Napa Valley College is not in the 100,*” said Gopal Shanker, founder of Napa-based Récolte Energy.
In its proposal, PowerLight—which at the time called itself the most experienced solar system supplier—said the solar farm would save the college $9.1 million over 25 years and require “virtually no maintenance.” It offered a 25-year warranty on the panels.
Within a year, in January 2007, PowerLight was acquired by Silicon Valley-based solar panel manufacturer SunPower Corp., which inherited the project’s annual inspections and maintenance duties. For a while, everything seemed to work smoothly.
A 2013 college report on Measure N projects showed the array producing the promised 40% of campus electricity, cutting carbon emissions by about 600 tons per year. Then performance began to slip.
By 2017, output had fallen to about one-third of the campus’s needs, according to a facilities master plan from that year. Maintenance costs climbed as the system aged.
In 2018, SunPower discovered a fault in the wiring and charged the college $160,000 for repairs. By late that year, a report listed the array’s “useful life” as nearly expired, and administrators floated the idea of relocating it to rooftops or parking lots to free up the land.
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### The Switch to Fuel Cells
As PG&E rates rose and solar output fell, the college sought other solutions. In August 2020, it entered into an agreement with San Jose-based Bloom Energy to install a fuel cell on campus.
The system runs on natural gas but converts it through a chemical reaction that’s more efficient and less polluting than burning fuel in a conventional generator. Installed in early 2021, the fuel cell was expected to save the college more than $3 million over 15 years. Bloom would own, operate, and maintain it, while the college paid for the energy it produced.
NVC spokesperson Jenna Sanders said the solar panels were decommissioned when the fuel cell came online because they had started leaking, posing a fire hazard. When the college sought repairs, she said, the company responsible for maintenance—SunPower—had gone out of business and was unavailable.
“The solar field was deactivated at some point and has not provided any electrical support to the campus in recent years,” she said. But Sanders offered no additional details, and without a clear timeline from the college or alignment between recent statements and older board records, it remains difficult to determine exactly when the panels were taken offline.
In a recording of the August 2020 board meeting, as then-assistant superintendent Bob Parker presented the fuel cell proposal for approval, he told the college’s board of trustees the solar field was still producing some of the campus’s daytime power. The fuel cell, he said, would augment the electricity produced by the solar field, not replace it.
Sanders said the college does not have information on the performance of the solar panels at that time. Up until February 2021, the college was making payments to SunPower for maintenance of the solar panels, documents show. Soon after that, they appear to have been deactivated.
Trustee Jason Kishineff said he doesn’t recall any discussion of the solar array since joining the board four years ago. Asked by The Press Democrat about the system’s performance and any records on its decommissioning, college officials said they had no information to share.
While a 2016 maintenance contract with SunPower promises annual performance reports, a public records request for any such documents did not yield any results.
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### SunPower’s Fall and the College’s Loss
The college’s timeline regarding SunPower doesn’t seem to match the public record. The company spun off its manufacturing division in 2019 but continued operating its commercial and industrial installation units through early 2022, according to published reports. It didn’t file for bankruptcy until August 2024.
By 2022, Napa Valley College was trying to recover costs linked to the failing array, but those efforts fizzled.
“We ran into a buzz saw,” Assistant Superintendent James Reeves said at a district facilities committee meeting in March 2025. “They (SunPower) went bankrupt and now they’ve been dissolved.”
College representatives did not respond to questions about whether the school sought insurance coverage, warranty compensation, or reimbursement for the project’s losses.
After SunPower’s bankruptcy, another company, Complete Solar, acquired its brand and trademarks. The new company directs former SunPower customers seeking service or warranty help to outside lenders, leaving many—including Napa Valley College—without clear recourse.
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### The ‘Solar Coaster’
In retrospect, it’s hard not to view Napa Valley College’s solar project as a failure. Yet some energy experts say the idea itself had merit.
“I quite like projects like the one you describe in Napa,” said Omer Karaduman, Center Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and at the Precourt Institute for Energy. “There are a lot of efficiencies you get by scaling the size of panels. Over around 1 megawatt, the scale works quite well. Without knowing the specifics of the project, I would say it sounds like a reasonable investment.”
And NVC isn’t the only public entity that struggled to adapt to problems that emerged in the solar industry, said Gopal Shanker, founder of Napa-based Récolte Energy and a renewable energy consultant for more than 20 years. He described a sector defined by shifting incentives, frequent bankruptcies, and layers of bureaucratic complexity from PG&E to the California Public Utilities Commission.
Industry insiders have a name for that volatility: “the solar coaster.”
“There may be like 100 people who understand this stuff,” Shanker said. “Napa Valley College is not in the 100. They have other things to do with their time. They’re trying to educate kids.”
He pointed to his work with Napa Valley Unified School District. The manufacturer that supplied the solar modules for district projects between 2010 and 2017—a Chinese company called Suntech Power—went out of business. So did the firm that made Napa Valley Unified’s inverters. And so did all three of the solar installers that built those systems.
“The burden of trying to figure out what all this means is falling on the person in charge of facilities, who in the middle of a meeting I’m having with him gets a call saying there’s an ant infestation in a classroom, and he’s got to run to solve that problem,” Shanker said.
The constant churn of technology and policy only adds to the chaos, he said.
“While we are developing a project, every morning I wake up and have to think, ‘OK, where have the goalposts moved today?’ Because the rules change while you are playing the game.”
When Napa Valley College installed its solar field, Shanker said, large arrays typically relied on powerful central inverters that controlled the entire system. Those inverters began failing after about a decade and have largely been replaced industry-wide by networks of smaller “string” or “micro” inverters.
As for the promised 25- to 30-year lifespans? Shanker said those projections became an industry mantra, repeated so often they were accepted as fact—even though they were “pulled out of thin air” by a solar module manufacturer in the late 1990s and early 2000s and not based on real data.
Karaduman agreed. While a 25- to 30-year lifespan has become the industry norm today, he said, that expectation wasn’t realistic in 2006.
“How long did they last? 10 to 15 years?” Karaduman said of the NVC panels. “I would say that’s pretty good.”
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### The Road Ahead
More than a year ago, the college began exploring a new campus-wide solar project. San Francisco-based solar energy company ForeFront Power proposed two systems: a 2.7-megawatt array for the main campus and a 442-kilowatt version for the college’s River Trail Village housing complex.
At an August 2024 meeting, physics professor Joshua Murillo praised the college’s intent to reduce fossil fuel use but asked whether the original solar project met its goals and, if it didn’t, whether the barriers it faced were being addressed in the new proposal.
“As someone concerned with the long-term impact of fossil fuel usage, I fully support efforts to reduce our reliance on them,” he said. “However, as a taxpayer, I also want to ensure that the college is assessing these projects with due diligence.”
In the months that followed, administrators determined the Bloom Energy fuel cell already offset much of the school’s electricity costs. A change in PG&E regulations meant customers could export electricity to the grid from only one on-site power source. As a result, the college withdrew from its contract with ForeFront for the main campus.
ForeFront had also offered in January to dismantle the old solar array for about $1 million, but the college balked.
“Eventually, we’ll do an open bid to demolish it,” Reeves said in March. “I think it may have some salvage value. I’d like to get rid of it as much as anybody but for a million dollars, we have to take a closer look.”
The college still plans to salvage the panels but has no firm schedule.
Today, the panels no longer follow the sun. They stand motionless as grass and weeds grow high around them near the Napa Valley Vine Trail—rusting reminders of a dead project.
The college did not provide information about ongoing maintenance expenses or liability insurance coverage. More recently, officials said a consultant involved in the early years of the project has offered to help redesign it to export energy again. The college has just begun exploring this option.
Meanwhile, the college is also considering another bond measure to fund future construction and infrastructure—more than two decades after voters approved the one that built the first solar field.
Despite the original system’s failure to live up to its promise, at least one expert thinks Napa Valley College should consider returning to solar power. Panel costs have fallen about 90% since 2006, said Karaduman, the Stanford Institute fellow, while electricity rates continue to rise. The technology has also become far more efficient—enough that the college could generate three or four times as much power from the same 5 acres. And with advances in battery storage, NVC could now use the energy it produces instead of navigating strict regulations on exporting it to the grid.
“Building a solar field from scratch is hard,” Karaduman said. “You have to get permits and do all this due diligence. But since you already have a field there, and you have connection to me, this sounds like a no-brainer investment.”
https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/11/14/napa-valley-colleges-7-5-million-solar-field-was-once-a-model-now-it-sits-dead-in-the-weeds/
