Middletown Company Reaches National Success

WFSB 3 Connecticut | Hannah Dickison / Kim Lucey
July 8, 2016

A Middletown-based company is helping cool residents down while helping the environment.

The company Greenskies currently provides solar power to Wesleyan University.

"The times when the sun is out is when the energy is needed most and when it is most expensive. We call that the peak periods of the day," said the school's sustainability director Jennifer Kleindienst.

Soon, the school will be able to produce all of their own energy thanks to the company.

"My hope is that eventually we'll have more solar arrays on campus and move away from fossil fuels and this is really a great start," said Kleindienst.

Greenskies president Mike Silvestrini said they have come a long way since their 2008 inception.

"[We] started off in a Westbrook basement trying to figure out what the solar energy industry was going to look like," said Silvestrini.

The company has carried out projects in 19 states and is ranked largest at market share for commercial and industrial solar panels.

"We're really happy to be an example of a company that is growing and competing against the silicon valley companies and the wall street companies and to finally reach that #1 rank in a market share basis is just a testament that you can do it here in Connecticut," said Silvestrini.

Although the company is increasingly in-demand, the cost of their services is declining.

Initially, they charged $9 per lot. It now costs just $2 per lot.

"It's gone down quite a bit, and with the technology innovations happening upstream and downstream and the value chain, we expect to continue to see those trends," said Silvestrini.

He stressed that despite their success, only around 2% of the energy used in the U.S. is solar.

Copyright 2016 WFSB (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved.