Envision Solar Reveals Move to Become Public Company

San Diego architect (and Xconomist) Bob Noble says that Envision Solar, the solar development firm that he founded in 2005, will soon begin trading shares over the counter after completing a reverse merger with a dormant public company. He announced the move at a reception held last night for about 75 friends and colleagues, which he characterized as a “celebration for what we’ve done after a tremendous amount of work over many months.”

Noble tells me that Envision Solar needed capital to expand its capabilities in developing solar-integrated infrastructure and building systems. As a public company, he says Envision Solar can get more exposure and benefit from broader investor interest.

“We have created a platform for growth,” Noble tells me. “I’ve identified key opportunities and business in distributed solar power generation worldwide.”

Envision Solar ParkingNoble’s vision for what he calls “distributed solar power generation” represents a scenario that many utilities have been unwilling to contemplate, at least until recent years. Utilities have long preferred a centralized power generation scheme that puts an industrial-scale power plant at the hub of electricity distribution. In contrast, distributed generation is more of a “small is beautiful” concept in which electricity is generated on a small scale by power producers scattered throughout a power grid.

As I’ve reported, Envision Solar got

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.