SUN KISSED: Transylvania County business finds solar business brighter than wiring.

• Author: Ellis, Kevin

Mike Kilpatrick's electrical company was just a few years old when a friend asked in 2014 if he could lend a crew to help complete a solar farm project in Rutherford County. "I didn't know what a solar farm was at the time," he says. "All we had done to that point was commercial electrical work for big box stores and hotels."

The work introduced Kilpatrick and his Southern Tradesmen Services Group to photovoltaic panels that convert sunlight into electrical energy and the equipment that feeds that energy to the grid. "I said to myself, 'This is cool. I really like it."

Kilpatrick, who is not an electrician, started his company in 2011 in the county where he grew up with five people he met through a staffing agency he formerly owned. He was contracting with other companies, when he decided to begin his own business with them as employees.

After his first solar experience, he transitioned his company quickly. He traveled the region for the next few years drumming up commercial-sized solar projects while turning down work in his older business. "The good Lord gave us sunlight and we're harvesting that sunlight and we're converting it to electricity," Kilpatrick says of his business model.

He shortened his business' name to STG Solar to reflect its new emphasis and grew from 18 employees to 206 over the past decade. The work has moved beyond just providing electricity, but to protecting the planet.

"This is more than just a job for us. It's something we're very dedicated to," says Kilpatrick.

STG Solar has an office in Raleigh, but its headquarters is in a small building off U.S. 64 in the unincorporated area of Pisgah Forest in Transylvania County, best known for its national forest and 250 waterfalls. The company has a small footprint in its home county, as most of its workers live elsewhere and are in the field, where it can take months to build an industrial-sized solar farm covering hundreds of acres of land.

From 2015 to 2022, STG Solar built 950 megawatts of industrial solar farms from New York to Arizona and along the East Coast. Kilpatrick has enough jobs lined up in the next two years to double that production if he can hire another 200 workers. A megawatt can power an average American home for 1.2 years.

"It's there, it's available for us to build," he says. "It's for us to decide if we can handle it all."

Solar energy didn't make a mark on North Carolinas energy grid until 2012, when it contributed 0.01%. By 2022, solar energy...