Garrett Hartwell of Power Northwest, a Portland-based residential and commercial solar installer serving Oregon and Washington, joins Kim Allchurch Flick to talk about the 2026 solar landscape and the company’s purpose-driven approach as a Benefit corporation.
Hartwell describes how a 2019 reset in Spain and concern about climate change led him to start the company in 2020, navigate licensing and electrical code requirements, pivot during COVID to virtual consultations, and grow to 35 employees.
He explains Power Northwest’s three pillars—happy homeowners, enriched employees (including apprenticeship programs), and a clean environment with extensive jobsite recycling.
Hartwell discusses the end of the 30% residential federal tax credit, continued 48E commercial credit enabling third-party owned residential leases (including PPAs and prepaid leases), supply-chain disruptions, tariffs, and evolving compliance rules, while remaining optimistic about solar’s durability and impact.
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Time Stamps
00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
00:48 Garrett’s Solar Origin Story
01:21 Spain Reset and Purpose
02:31 Launching Power Northwest
06:10 COVID Pivot and Growth
08:20 Becoming a Benefit Corporation
09:03 People Planet Profit Pillars
11:04 Jobsite Waste and Recycling
13:50 Customer Story and Team Culture
16:41 Solar in 2026 Incentives Shift
18:24 Third Party Ownership Explained
19:55 PPA and Prepaid Lease Options
23:54 Community Solar Explained
24:43 Solar Future Vision
26:26 Supply Chain Crunch
27:13 Tariffs and Regulations
28:17 Solar Economics Today
29:29 Hidden Coal in Grid
31:04 Solar and Shipping Impact
32:22 Benefit Corporation Mission
34:03 Climate Hope and Nature
35:41 How to Get a Consult
36:50 Winning the Solar Games
39:16 Dinner Guests and Values
41:22 Final Thanks and Wrap
Kim Allchurch Flick: Hello everyone. This is Kim Allchurch Flick, and my guest today is Garrett Hartwell of Power Northwest, a local solar installation company at a Portland, Oregon. The company serves Oregon and Washington providing both residential and commercial solar services.
Founded as a Benefit corporation, Garrett had a passion for creating a purpose-driven company, putting people and planet first. He believes that more profit simply means more purpose, and is striving to build a lasting company that can make a positive impact in the world where people enjoy going to work every day.
The topic is the current landscape of solar in Oregon. Welcome. It’s so good to see you. Yeah.
Garrett Hartwell: Good to see you, Kim.
Kim Allchurch Flick: So tell us, we’re in 2026. So solar is certainly one of the options, has been an energy option for a while and things are changing constantly. But tell us about your journey and what has shaped your values to this point in time.
What is,
Garrett Hartwell: yeah,
Kim Allchurch Flick: so what has your life been like?
Garrett Hartwell: I’ve been in and around solar for about 15 years. I was in a side market. I worked for an inverter manufacturer and a very small part of what we did was solar. But my wife and I, we had been saving our money for a handful of years and in 2019 we quit our jobs and we moved to Europe for six months.
It was for us something we’d wanted to do forever and really just a reset, look, look at our lives and figure out what we want to do going forward. It was fun. We each had our own requirements, so she wanted Europe and somewhere with good food. I wanted to be able to work on my Spanish and then surf.
And we landed on this little city in northern Spain that had everything. It had like great food and surf and but yeah, while we were out there, I was just, I read a lot. And climate change was just weighing super heavy on me. For me, it became really clear I wanted to create something where I could be part of the solution.
And I’d been in and around the industry, but I wanted to be able to make a big impact on our local community. When I was at the inverter manufacturer, we would sell or design projects all across the country. And at the end of the day, it just was a project name. I had no real connection with it.
But coming back and starting Power Northwest was phenomenal. I got to shake homeowners hands and it started with just me an electrician, so I sold the first couple of projects and we installed ’em together. But then it became tough, I would be doing project management from the roof and ordering the panels for the next job and trying to, answer homeowner questions while we’re, setting a ladder or, what have you.
Pretty quickly I realized I needed help. And yeah, just slowly started hiring people. It started with a sales guy that. Did a great job and sold more than we could handle. So pretty quickly we got yeah, just a small crew and and grew from there. Gosh, six years later we now have 35 employees and hundreds of, I hope happy customers.
And yeah, it’s been quite an experience. I’m really proud of what we’ve built.
Kim Allchurch Flick: Wow, that is so amazing. I’d love to dial back to Spain a little bit and 2019, which means before COVID
Garrett Hartwell: Yeah.
Kim Allchurch Flick: That COVID happened. And what, how did that shape your thoughts about. How to come back and create a solar company, but also other things like comparisons of living in a different culture, different country.
What was that like for you?
Garrett Hartwell: I could talk forever about the Spanish, like cultural experience. But just quickly, I think my biggest takeaway was how close they are to like family and friends. We quickly, met this group of three guys that brought us in and we still talk with them today.
One of ’em is coming to visit us this summer, which would be super cool. But yeah, coming back after a break I was super motivated and had this idea in mind where, yeah, my, my goal was to install. I think what I wanted to do in that first year, which is 2020 was just one house.
And I wanted to do everything perfectly, do a ton of research. And initially in 2020 it was already tough. Those couple months before COVID, just understanding the licensing requirements, the fact that I needed to know inside and out. The National Electric Code and then how Oregon changes and manipulates that code and they have their own set of rules and regulations.
So what was this kind of fantas full like dream of mine all of a sudden just became insanely tough. But yeah, I just, I studied a ton. I read that code book from front to back. I took a handful of courses on it. Later I ended up taking and passing the Washington State Admin Test, which is supposedly one of the harder electrical tests in the country.
It’s literally torture. It is seven hours. They lock you in a room and you can come out to go to the bathroom if you need to, but the clock keeps going and you need every second of it. I’ve taken a lot of tests in my life, but that was definitely one of the hardest. But yeah, so going through that process, understanding what’s required, and then the biggest thing, I was super fortunate to, to meet an electrician that shared a lot of my same values, but also knew solar inside and out.
And as I mentioned, we got to install, a lot of the early projects together. Just the two of us, and I learned it from nuts and bolts up. But then yeah, COVID hit and my wife who had also gone on her own personal journey of what she wanted to do. She had landed at a great fertility clinic in town, so she’s a nurse and she realized she wanted to get into fertility, help families, create their families.
And unfortunately they were classified as a non-essential group just because Fertility’s elective, and then that their clinic ended up having to donate a lot of their supplies to the hospitals. So she lost her job. I was spending money, not making money, and so we quickly had to move out of our house, rent it to somebody else, and we took our dog and my wife and I went and lived with my parents.
And so at the same time. I was ramping up to go meet people in person and go see their roof and check the, the shading. And all of that just changed and I had to quickly pivot to doing virtual consultations which was nuts. But looking back, those first two years, COVID was super beneficial for us.
People were home, people were using electricity at home people were looking at their monthly expenditures, and solar was a great solution. And it still is, but I think at that time it became a big focus for people and home projects became a big focus for people. It allowed for a lot of just organic growth.
But yeah, at the time I probably would’ve. Told you a lot of opposite things. It was pretty scary, but,
Kim Allchurch Flick: oh, what a struggle. It’s, thank you for sharing that and it brings back, memories of the realities of that time as well. And I’m glad things worked out so well that, and it’s interesting how you’re right, I hadn’t thought about staying home.
Working remotely means people see their own power bills. More than if they were going to work every day and somebody else is paying a working day power bill. But you’re right, it, it becomes personal then, and yeah. And tell us about being a benefit corporation as well. How did that come about?
Garrett Hartwell: Yeah. So I knew from the get-go I wanted to create a mission driven organization.
And so that was in our DNA from the get go. I believe we got certified as a benefit corporation in 21 or 22. And that was a chance for us to write down and really put in writing what being a mission-driven organization meant for us. And then to have a third party come in and critique and articulate that and.
It’s great and it’s great that every year we can revisit that. And so for us, what it means is we are a we’re a business that’s profit driven but everything is arranged around our mission. Our mission is to transition our community to renewable energy, and we support that with three pillars.
First pillar is happy homeowners. So we’re super customer centric. We wanna make sure that everything we do, at the end of the day that the customer or well homeowner or business owner, is completely satisfied and they got everything they wanted and hopefully more. Our second pillar is enriched employees.
I tell everyone this company’s built for us. We can make of it what we want. I want it to be a great place to work. We provide or we strive to provide a lot of resources. So we’re a training agent for journeyman electricians, which means that we have a four year apprenticeship program where people can come in with really no prior experience and work through both weekly classes.
But then, obviously daily time in the field underneath a licensed electrician. We also have a subset of that, which is a two year program for, specifically for solar and renewable energy. So that’s the limited renewable technician apprenticeship program. So for everyone in the field it’s a great path upward.
Electricians in Oregon, specifically in Portland make great hourly rates. And then we support that with great health insurance, a 401k program. So yeah, enriched employees is like very strong pillar for us. We wanna make sure that it’s a cornerstone of what we’re doing.
And the third one is clean environment. So obviously that aligns with, the solar thing. But we try to take it a step further and look at how our business. Uses electricity and the carbon footprint that we create and how we can reduce that. So one of the things that really surprised me when we were first starting is how much waste comes off of a, just a single project.
The amount of extra wire cut rail, all this packaging that everything comes in boxes, plastic, cardboard. So we have a great process now where we take all of that back. We recycle our cardboards, we actually get paid to recycle our metals. But then we actually pay to have our plastics recycled.
So our films, our hard plastics we collect it all and batch it and sort it and then pay to have that recycled. So the amount of stuff that ends up in the landfill from a project is very minimal. And I just wish more companies were doing the same thing because, we hire installers from other companies and like they, they’ll tell us that sometimes they’ll throw away.
I won’t even get into it, but I just it’s one of the important things that we really try to strive for is recycling. We carpool when we can, we fill our box trucks up with biodiesel, any little thing to yeah, just reduce our carbon footprint.
Kim Allchurch Flick: How. What about the recycling?
Where do you get film and things like that? Where do you take
Garrett Hartwell: it? Yeah. Film has been a really tough one for us. We had a recycling partner, I believe it was Denison Plastics that used to take it for us. And then they stopped. And then we actually were taking it to New Seasons for quite a while.
But we just recently found a new recycler. I’ll have to get back to you on their name, but they’ll pretty much take anything except for the straps that a lot of our pallets are strapped in. We’re still having trouble sorting those. But they will take our films and then in any hard plastic with a number on it, they’ll take for us.
Kim Allchurch Flick: That’s so good to hear. And that’s commercial because I know that residential, Ridwell, started a while back and there’s a place by the airport, but they’ll take film bags lids that formerly, can’t go in the street. Recycling. Recycling is. Not as a simple thing. And it’s interesting to learn how to separate and get things to the right places so that it actually works.
But on a commercial level with that volume, it’s really curious and so glad that you’re doing that. That’s really remarkable.
Garrett Hartwell: I reached out to rid. ‘Cause they’ve got a great setup and a great process. But I think we’re not. Might not be the right customer for them. I don’t know.
They never end up responding who knows? But yeah we’ve got some decent avenues for recycling most everything that comes off a job site.
Kim Allchurch Flick: And that’s so good to know because every job site is a lot. And in, in discussion, we hired. We hired you to come out and install our solar panels a year ago and at our house, this is in Washington, a metal roof, and it was such a great experience, but I was so impressed with your guys because they were installing on a metal roof, which is really slippery in pouring rain over, I think it was four or five days.
And what I observed was how. Incredibly engaged. They were with each other and something would come up and they’d huddle and problem solve. And because there’s so many components to it, just the installation. But the things I don’t understand so much is the electrical, the box, having to get the inspection, all of that is new to me and how much they work together.
And it did not work around, but we’re saying, okay, this is the situation. We could do this, or this. Let’s decide. It was really on the ground decision making that I thought was so empowering for them because they, they were all involved in it. And the other thing I noticed is on, on breaks I’d let my dogs out.
The dogs just fell in love with them, all of them. And they’d sit around on breaks discussing things and some of them were just talking with the each other about other companies they’d worked for and how it was so much better working for Power Northwest because of those benefits. Because the way they were treated, and this was in 2025, is still off the heels of COVID and how they felt taken care of.
Appreciated. And so I, that made my heart feel really good because there are options to choose for residential, solar and we’re have zero regrets and are so happy. And so thank you for creating a company where it really shows when workers show up and you know that they’re. They’re happy, but also empowered in decision making and empowered in trying to figure out how to solve a problem and working together, doing that, it made a huge impression on me and I’m
Garrett Hartwell: Oh, that’s awesome.
Kim Allchurch Flick: And we also paid nothing for our power. It’s really pretty incredible to see a power build. It’s in the negatives and how power is. Going off to somewhere else and feeling yes, we can make a reduction, we can help something. It is clean and I’m grateful. I’m really grateful.
Garrett Hartwell: Yeah. That’s so cool. That’s awesome.
Kim Allchurch Flick: So what is it like in the solar community and what are obstacles and challenges now
Garrett Hartwell: right now?
Kim Allchurch Flick: It’s 2026, so I’m gonna guess tariffs, but what, what is happening in current now, but also your future view?
Garrett Hartwell: Yeah. Right now is tough. There was a big change at the end of last year the one big beautiful bill.
Sunsetted the 30% residential solar credit at the end of December last year. And that was like the biggest incentive available for solar. That really did make it pretty viable. And so to give you an example our average system still blows me away how expensive it is. An average system’s about $30,000.
And so that 30% federal tax credit took 30% right off the top. Got a lot of threes in here, but yeah, so that $30,000 solar system, nine grand would, would come right off the top. And so that net cost would be 21,000. So yeah, as you can assume, that’s a big chunk of money that is now no longer available for traditional residential systems.
And when that came to pass in July last year I was pretty scared. I didn’t really know what that meant for the future of solar, but one thing that I’ve learned about the solar industry is we’re. Kinda a big group of people that really care about the environment. We care about the, our future as humans on this earth.
And there’s a lot of innovative and creative people in this industry. And so one of the carve outs deep inside this bill was that they are continuing to allow the 48 e commercial tax credit. So that’s for businesses. But inside that category they also allow for third party owned systems.
So a third party owned system is a solar system that’s owned by a business or a corporation, but it’s installed on a residence. And these are. Products that have actually been very popular in the solar industry. I read an article the other day that about half of the systems installed up to 2025 were categorized as third party owned.
And they’re not as common in Oregon, but very common in Texas, Florida, California Illinois some of the bigger solar markets. But essentially third party owned system, they can set it up as a lease. And there’s a handful of different ways that these leases present themselves. But the main thing is we can still capture that 30% federal tax credit and then push those savings onto a homeowner.
The two main lease products that we’re offering. We’ve vetted a lot of ’em because unfortunately there are some, I don’t wanna say bad actors, but there’s just some stuff that’s not as beneficial for the homeowner. But the two that we found we’re actually really excited about. So the first one is what they call power purchase agreement.
This one specifically works really well in Portland General Electric or PGE Territory because. They if your h if your house big if your house is good for solar this company called LightReach can lock you in at a cost of power that’s actually below what you’re paying from the utility. It’s incredible.
So most PGE customers pay about 18 to 20 cents per kilowatt hour. And LightReach can get you in at 17 cents. And they do that at zero upfront cost. And then that 17 cents it typically does increase over time. The term of the lease is 25 years, which aligns with a lot of the warranties around solar product.
And it’ll typically increase at, let’s say 2.99% every year. So that 17 turns into 17.30 cents and then 17.60 cents or whatever it might be. Whereas historically we’ve seen the utility increase its rates at 5% or more. So not only are they able to undercut the utility day one.
They’re gonna protect the homeowner against future costs of power, increase increases and provide them with something that’s very predictable. Yeah, speaking of COVID the four years after COVID utilities specifically PGE increased their rates 40%. And I don’t think that’s a trend that’s gonna go away.
When we look at some of the macroeconomics of. Electric vehicles and the power consumption required for all these big computing data centers that are fueling ai. We’ve been pretty fortunate with historically low costs of power, but yeah I’m expecting it just to continue to rise in the future.
So long story short, this power purchase agreement I’m excited about. I think it’s a great way for people to. Get free clean energy or less expensive clean energy. The other third party owned product that we have is actually a prepaid lease. So it’s common to a prepaid lease on a vehicle where you pay a large lump sum upfront.
Now that lump sum has got the 30%. A 30% discount baked in. So for that $30,000 system, we’re actually able to offer it at $21,000. The lease is a shorter term lease, so it’s about six years and it’s year six. There, there’s three options for the homeowner. They can either renew the lease, they can.
Cancel the lease and request that we come remove the system from their roof or they can purchase the system at fair market value. And the good thing about that last option is they can purchase the system at fair market value, but they get to apply that prepaid lease amount.
Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh.
Garrett Hartwell: So yeah it’s hopefully a relatively small amount at the end of that lease term.
In some scenarios it, it might be free, but yeah, it’s essentially a great way for owners that want to get that 30% discount, eventually want to own the system, it’s after you’re six. But yeah, caught in this weird place where. Federal tax credit just isn’t available for standard homeowners.
Kim Allchurch Flick: That’s good to know. And we’ll put anything you can send us in the show notes as well. And I also think in some states there are, it’s not installing solar, but being able to pay into a large solar system that helps reduce. Power as well. So people are catching on in ways before they get to the point where they’re installing their own.
Garrett Hartwell: Yeah. I know, I don’t wanna get too technical, but what you’re referring to is community solar.
Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh, that’s what it’s, yes,
Garrett Hartwell: and it’s great. Essentially either utility or a different entity goes out and they build a big solar farm and then they get subscribers and they can. Essentially offer usually less expensive power than from the grid.
And it is generated by the sun. And so it’s like owning a solar system that just isn’t on your house, it’s in a field somewhere. Yeah, community solar is phenomenal. If it’s available in your area.
Kim Allchurch Flick: And the third party prepaid lease sounds really great as well. And before we open the.
The podcast we were discussing the book, here Comes The Sun by Bill McKibbon. And what struck me about that book is how upbeat and optimistic he is. And this is a climate scientist who’s in high regard, has been thrown in jail many times for protesting, and is really passionate about all things climate.
But to have him be this optimistic is really something. And he said that solar is one of the best future forward ways of getting clean energy and how solar is. It’s getting to the point where it can be so small, you can put it on a deck rail. You could put it on and it was mostly looking at what China is doing because they’ve been able to really reduce costs and put solar everywhere.
Think of parking lots with roofs that are solar agriculture, where solar putting just right allows grazing animals beneath it and gives enough dappled shade that different crops can grow and enough sun that crops can grow. And it seems like what a genius way to use land if we need the energy and the solar to be able to multipurpose something.
And so I was wondering how your, what is your current worldview and the future, and also in your industry, like what is the supply chain like and how’s it changing and what’s happening there? And what kind of partnerships, if any, are being formed?
Garrett Hartwell: Gosh, I don’t even wanna
Kim Allchurch Flick: talk questions.
Garrett Hartwell: Yeah. I don’t even wanna talk about the supply chain.
Okay. It got crunched really hard towards the end of last year. So as you could imagine with the incentives going away, we had a lot of people that wanted to get in before they did. And we made a lot of commitments to people and. Everything went awry. Panels that we could usually buy were gone.
Racking, disappeared overnight. And it was a really big challenge for us. Good news. We were able to get every single customer in by like December 31st at 8:00 PM but it took every ounce of our company to do it. Everyone was. January 1st, we were exhausted, we were done. So it’s like PTSD at this point.
But. Going forward. Yeah we’re navigating tariffs. One of the new regulations is a foreign entity of concern. So for that commercial tax credit there’s another layer that was added to it. Essentially for us to still claim that for 48 e commercial one, any product that we use must comply with those FEOC regulations, or foreign entity of concern.
What that even means. It has been very nebulous up until about last week. We finally got some clarification from IRS I believe it was last Wednesday, but long story short, it’s just very convoluted. Solar is becoming more and more complicated, more and more politic, politicized. But at the end of the day, it is a great technology.
One of the best things about it is. In itself, very simple and it’s passive. It’s a set it and forget it sort of thing. The products come with 25 year warranties. I don’t know anything else that does. And they’re expected to last much, much longer. And so my outlook on the future is that solar will endure.
We are going through some relatively tough times now but already. There’s some great solutions out there for people. And I think even as the commercial tax credit sunsets in 27 I’m hopeful for a world where solar can stand up on its own. I think what’s tough about that though is almost every other form of energy receives pretty substantial sub incentives or subsidies. And but I think what would be really exciting is if solar can continue to compete with alternatives without any subsidies. I saw an article a year or two ago that solar at scale. Is the cheapest form of new electricity. But what’s really encouraging is with this power purchase agreement, we’re seeing it’s the cheapest form of electricity even for a house, at small scale.
Which to me is mind blowing that we can have a better form of electricity, solar that is less expensive. And just to touch on that real quick, small tangent we did an analysis of, okay, we live in Oregon. We get a lot of hydroelectric electricity. It’s relatively clean as far as carbon footprint’s concerned.
But what’s the what’s in the rest of that mix? And we crunched some numbers and we passed ’em around to a couple experts. And what we came up with is the average home in Portland. This is nuts. Average home in Portland burns about 120 pounds of coal a month. And we even did a fun commercial.
We took a wheelbarrow, we filled it full of coal and we dumped it on a porch. And that’s what’s happening without people even realizing that is our current. Energy mix, we get a lot of hydro, but then we supplement it with coal that’s purchased from outta state with natural gas fired plants.
And with nuclear. And I, and nuclear I do believe is a pretty good source of energy. But that natural gas, which is just poisonous methane and obviously coal yeah are not good sources of electricity. So anyway, it’s my small tangent. On
Kim Allchurch Flick: hundred and 20 pounds of coal a month.
Garrett Hartwell: Isn’t that nuts?
And we don’t even think about it. If it showed up at our porch every month, and we had to put it into a burner and watch all those fumes go up into the sky, people might think twice, because it’s all produced hundreds of miles away. Yeah. We just don’t even think about it.
Kim Allchurch Flick: So true. There’s something else in the book that Bill McKibbon brings up as well is that the more solar is used, the less fossil fuel need to be used. And in supply chain and logistics, a lot of the ships on the ocean are filled with oil, are gasoline. We transporting like crazy and if more and more people went to alternative sources and there was solar, which becomes passive.
So once it’s made and granted energy need is needed to make solar panels and all the parts, but as you said, it’s passive once it installed and just imagining if solar were the replacement and there was no need for the ships to transport. That’s how big the transition could be in the future.
And what would that do for the environment, for the ocean environment as well? What would it mean to have fewer, granted, there would need to be transport ships for solar panels because we’ll probably still import export those. But it’s interesting to forecast that out and think what could solar do?
And the other. Bonus about solar is it’s really quiet. It’s so passive that it’s just there and it’s super quiet and I think you’re really onto something. What has been, what’s been the upside of being a benefit corporation for Good? Has that been noticed in the world of solar? I know there’s competition for residential and commercial, but what has it been like for you to be a benefit corporation?
Garrett Hartwell: Yeah. We don’t really market it that much. We do put our little seal on our proposals, but for us it’s just more of like, why do we get up every day? What is it that we’re doing? ‘Cause there are a lot of challenges we face. And so sometimes you just need that guiding light of, we’re here for a reason.
And yeah it makes us feel good at the end of the day. And those three pillars, like every decision we make, how’s that gonna affect the employees? How’s that gonna affect our customers? How does that affect our carbon footprint? We run ’em through those three things. And does it align with the mission?
For example as we prepared for a little bit of a reset in solar, we looked at, okay, what are other things that we can do? We’ve got great electricians on staff. We’ve got a team of roofers on staff. What are other areas that we can go into and what is that? How does that align with our mission?
As we looked to diversify a little bit. So yeah, being a Benefit corporation has definitely provided us with kind of that guiding light and that rubric as we strategically plan out our future. And the end result of that has been pretty cool. Things like, like you mentioned, just we’ve got great people here and I think everyone subscribes to what we’re doing and we’re better for it.
Kim Allchurch Flick: That’s wonderful. And what makes you optimistic?
Garrett Hartwell: As tough as things are and as hard as people might be trying to fight against renewable energy, which still just blows me away that that’s a thing. I’m optimistic about that future that you described where we’re not constantly polluting our planet where we can generate electricity and still have all of our common luxuries that we need but in a much more sustainable way.
I got a little 2-year-old boy and I’m watching our winters get warmer, less snow. I’m, we go. Off to Mexico and coral reefs that used to be full of life are just bleached white. I’m already seeing changes and effects of climate change and I’d love, a future where we’re able to reverse some of those effects that we’ve we’re starting to see.
Kim Allchurch Flick: Wow.
Garrett Hartwell: Yeah.
Kim Allchurch Flick: That’s really something and so important and I. Scuba diver. I’ve also seen that through time. And it is super heartbreaking. But there’s something we can do about it. And I find the resilience of nature to be remarkable. If we can lift the pollutants and give nature a chance, things come back fast.
Garrett Hartwell: Yeah.
Kim Allchurch Flick: And it’s, and noticing going back to COVID, fewer people driving. Going outside and finding, there are mountain ranges behind mountain ranges that I’d never seen before. And it’s, and birds are coming back. And so if we give it a chance, and I think solar is a really big part of that. So how can people reach you?
Garrett Hartwell: Yeah. Me personally, email works great. My email is Garrett@PowerNW.com. But I would encourage everybody that’s interested in having a solar discussion to just get on our website and you can schedule a time with one of our designers. And we can either come out or we can actually do quite a bit virtually, whichever you prefer.
But it’s essentially a free service where we tell you whether or not your house is good for solar or not. ’cause not all homes are good for solar. And if it is good for solar, walk you through what options may or may not make sense. And that in itself is so fun for us ’cause we get to share our knowledge and expertise.
But then fun for homeowners too, where they can learn about how much they could potentially save if solar is right for their house.
Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh I highly encourage it. I, it is fun and it is interesting and I’ve become a believer. I appreciate that very, very much. Anything else you’d like to share?
Garrett Hartwell: We had a kind of a fun piece of news last week. So every year there’s a big solar conference it’s called Intersolar. This last year it was in San Diego and part of that conference, they’ve got all the booths and manufacturers there, but they hold what’s called the solar games. And it’s where.
They pre-select I think usually it’s eight teams. This year was six teams. And it’s like you gotta apply to get in. It’s pretty tough. But they do ’em in head-to-head competition, so they’ve got this mock roof and they’ve got an inverter that you’ve gotta wire up and batteries. And so it’s this timed thing where you are judged on.
Quality, speed, safety, teamwork, and then overall professionalism. Long story short, made it through the first day. There’s three days of competition, so we made it through the first day, onto the second day. We won on the second day by a big margin, by 20 points, just nuts because it’s out of a hundred points.
And then on the third day we won the finals. Wow. With the highest score they’ve ever seen in solar game history. So we’ve got a picture of the guys with a $10,000 check and yeah, it was just, what was really cool to see is obviously everybody there knows what they’re doing. They’re all phenomenal installers.
But I think what set us apart is. Our guys just worked together, so well, they could communicate together so well. It was I think one of the nicknames the judge had for us was the silent assassins. Like without even speaking, we knew what each person was doing and were able to just execute.
So it was really cool. We’re really excited about the guys bringing home the gold,
Kim Allchurch Flick: what fun your own Olympics. Yeah, and when you were talking about that, I was envisioning seeing those guys on my roof and in the driveway taking a lunch break with, this, with the dogs around them talking about things.
And that’s exactly what I saw was that like collaboration and thoughtfulness and inquisitiveness and skill and
Garrett Hartwell: yeah,
Kim Allchurch Flick: and delight. It’s very cool. Anyway, it really is. Oh I’m. What a great story. What a great story to end on. If you, this is a final question. If you could have dinner with anyone living or deceased up to three people, who would they be and why?
Garrett Hartwell: Okay. First one, Robin Williams. Yeah, I think that’d be a good one. Second one. Leonardo da Vinci. I just, I don’t know. That’d be crazy. He is a creator, an inventor. I, be a very interesting dinner. And then the third one I don’t usually like to get political, but I’m gonna say James Talarico.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with him. But yeah, he’s the Democratic senator or I guess running for Senate out of Texas. And I just love his message of hope and love. I think right now a lot of our politics are driven by fear and hate, and I think the only thing I can truly fight hate is love.
And he’s got a great message. Sounds like you’re familiar with ’em, but anyone who’s listening who isn’t, look ’em up. He actually has a great interview with Ezra Klein from a month or so ago. And yeah, a dinner with him would be super interesting and inspiring.
Kim Allchurch Flick: Yes. And I was exposed to an interview with him when he was on Stephen Colbert, and it wasn’t aired on Colbert.
Garrett Hartwell: Right.
Kim Allchurch Flick: And it went to YouTube where it had more views than it would’ve been if it was only on Colbert and. You’re right. And he brings faith into it in a way that is for everyone. Yeah. And he you’re right. And we’re, we have a discussion here about solar that is evergreen, pardon the pun, but it can be heard for years to come, and we’re recording this in February, 2026, so it’ll be interesting as a look back to see what resonates in this conversation of about the people. But what a great table. Creative people.
Garrett Hartwell: Yeah. It’ll be fun.
Kim Allchurch Flick: Very inspiring and a lot of comedy. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much.
You are a delight. I appreciate you. I do wanna be clear that I am a customer and I’m very appreciative and I know we picked the right solar company for us because of the values as well as it wasn’t just the, had the ability to get federal. Federal kickbacks and not kickbacks, that’s the wrong word.
But to be able to take advantage of that timing. But we’re so glad it was Power Northwest and moving forward, it’s it every day. I feel like it’s a way that I’m in a tiny way, but tiny matters when a lot of us do it collectively. There’s a lot that can be done when more and more people do small things, and my house is not big.
But it’s making a contribution and the more people that do it, the better we do. And it’s all about being able to breathe clean air and have the birds come back to the trees and all those things. It’s a little bit of a way to pave the road for that to get better.
Garrett Hartwell: Absolutely. Yeah. I love it.
That’s why I get to do it every day. So it’s a lot of fun. Yeah. Thank you so much. And Solar
Kim Allchurch Flick: Works in the Pacific Northwest. It really, it
Garrett Hartwell: truly does.
Kim Allchurch Flick: I know it’s shocking, but it
Garrett Hartwell: does. Today is a beautiful sunny day, so it’s absolutely working.
Kim Allchurch Flick: Yeah. Thank you so much. Take care everyone. This is Kim Allchurch Flick signing off.
Thank you. We’ll talk soon. Bye-Bye.
This Episode’s Guest: Garrett Hartwell
Garrett Hartwell is the Founder of Power Northwest, a local solar installation company out of Portland, OR. The company serves Oregon and Washington providing both residential and commercial solar services. Founded as a Benefit Corporation, Garrett had a passion for creating a purpose driven company, putting people and planet first. He believes that more profit simply means more purpose and is striving to build a lasting company that can make a positive impact on the world, where people enjoy going to work every day.
