These days, solar energy has gotten really cheap.

In certain places, depending on how you crunch the numbers,

it can be the cheapest type of energy out there.

But it's pretty easy to forget that back in the early days it was incredibly expensive stuff

solar in those days was like a religion you had to believe this is Arthur

Rudin and he was one of those believers, even back in the

beginning when solar was so expensive it was only being put on satellites up in

space. I've been in the photovoltaic industry for about 40 years now.

Arthur was working for America's first big solar panel manufacturer,

a bouncing baby startup called Arco Solar that had been newly acquired by a big oil company. It was new, but it was serious business,

and Arthur is a serious business guy. You know, I come from Boston, I'm a conservative guy by nature.

That's the way I was brought up.

Now, his job was to move solar modules.

Get them out the door.

Sell them, preferably.

And at one point, he had noticed that one of their sales representatives was doing pretty well.

And we asked him where are they going? Oh, Northern California.

And everyone over at Arco was like, huh? What's going on in Northern California?

So they sent Arthur to check it out. What he found was that there was a handful of little shops, mom and pop retailers,

that were selling solar panels to just regular old people,

people who were paying in cash.

People are just pulling up with a fist full of cash

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