—Systemic change begins with personal change—
Arnold Leitner is the founder and CEO of YouSolar.
He was born in Vienna, Austria, but grew up in Germany. As a teenager, he volunteered in wildlife conservation, working with many species, including peregrine falcons and amphibians.
He designed one of Germany’s first super-efficient passive houses, which his family built in 1991. He moved to the United States to get his doctorate in physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. During his experimental research on superconductors at ultra-low temperatures, he developed his passion and skills for building technology.
After graduation, he worked as a consultant for S&P Global, where he authored the seminal and influential study “Fuel from the Sky” for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), demonstrating the potential and feasibility of large-scale solar power development in the Desert Southwest. As a result of his work for the DOE, Arnold received an “extraordinary ability” green card, later becoming a U.S. citizen.
While attending Columbia Business School, Arnold founded SkyFuel and re-invented concentrating solar power technology. SkyFuel’s high-precision parabolic trough uses mirror film technology licensed from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) instead of glass mirrors. The technology won an R&D 100 Award and on its 40th anniversary, NREL featured SkyFuel’s parablic trough as one of the major clean-tech accomplishments. SkyFuel exited in a sale in 2015.
After leaving SkyFuel, Arnold founded YouSolar. He recognized early that lithium-ion batteries would not only provide cost-effective energy storage but could also deliver high power. When combined with solar panels, you have energy, storage, and power, which is everything you need for an independent power system. The vision was then to turn this insight into a revolutionary product. The result is the PowerBloc® solar nano-grid with a highly innovative power architecture that is modular and scalable. The PowerBloc now powers multiple homes in California. Aside from growing the company, Arnold’s next goal is to deliver the PowerBloc in modular, stackable enclosures and to take the PowerBloc everywhere.
Arnold holds a PhD in Physics from C.U. Boulder and an MBA from Columbia. He lives with his wife and two kids east of San Francisco.
How do we affect others and how does it relate to what brings meaning to life? I'm surprised it took this long for one of my conversations to cover the meaning of life, but I'm not surprised it came with a fellow physicist. Being able to talk quantitatively about nature comfortably, from lots of practice, lets us understand patterns of what's happening. Arnold can also talk with integrity for living by the values he talks about. We see the challenges similarly, though I focus on changing culture and he focuses more on technology. Talking about culture and meaning comes later in this conversation. First we talk in numbers about the patterns he sees in power use, then we expand to reducing battery needs overall, though mostly in houses and transportation. We also talk about most likely outcomes for humanity. He sees similar results to what I expect if humanity continues business as usual, which isn't pretty. I think we can do more than he can, though I recognize few people think hundreds of millions of Americans can reduce their overall impact something like ninety percent in a few years. I didn't think I could until I did. Listen and find out why I looked up the lyrics to 99 Red Balloons and watched the Matrix for first time in at least a decade.
Do you like my work because of my nearly unique background of a PhD in physics, having cofounded a couple companies, and having an MBA? You're in luck with Arnold, who has done the same. We got our MBAs together at Columbia so inevitably met. He was working on his solar startup then, Skyfuel, which was making news, though I wasn't working on sustainability yet the, still feeling like individual action wouldn't matter yet. We ran into each other and talked about his new company, YouSolar, comparing how much power, energy, and reliability he supplies his clients with my little portable battery and panels I have to carry to my roof. In today's conversation, after he shares his background, he shares YouSolar's grand goal, which is to change the grid, not just provide solutions to some clients. He's looking toward systemic change, filling in a power gap.