Lee Gordon, president and founder of Morningstar Corporation, gave PES an interesting insight into this employee owned company. They provide over-spec’ components, with their smart digital designs and serve the whole spectrum of the solar industry. They took a chance and it paid off.
PES: Hi Lee, welcome back to PES Solar. It’s great to talk with you. Happily, we have many new readers so please could you begin with a brief overview of Morningstar?
Lee Gordon: Sure. When Ken Gerken and I were laying the groundwork for our second successful start-up, solar energy was still a new field. At that time sinking fossil fuel prices and the tail end of a recession had just finished off one of the industry’s leading solar power generation companies, while fledgling solar panel technology was still clawing its way toward that magic 10% efficiency milestone. Solar simply didn’t look like the best number on which to place a strategic bet.
Fortunately for the emerging solar industry in 1993, we were in a gambling mood and started Morningstar Corporation anyway. Our new company went on to set standards and break records, and established benchmarks which stand tall 25 years later: over four million products sold to mission-critical customers in diverse industry sectors, well over 100 distributors on six continents (and even a loyal installer following in Antarctica), and the lowest hardware failure rate in the industry.
PES: You provide your solar systems to several industry sectors, which is the most important market for you?
