Photo by Sam Chandler.
Eagle Solar & Light’s first Birmingham project was at the Alabama Environmental Council Community Recycling Center’s new facility in Avondale.
Prior to last November, Samuel Yates said the Birmingham metro area did not have a company devoted to solar energy power systems.
The Mountain Brook resident has since helped start two of them.
In November, Yates said he co-founded Vulcan Solar Power as the first business of its kind in the area. But after a benevolent split with his founding partner in late March, he said he decided to launch his own. On April 1, Eagle Solar & Light came to life.
Located at 4005 Second Ave. S. in Avondale, Eagle Solar & Light specializes in the design, installation and service of solar energy systems for both residential and commercial use, Yates said.
Essentially, Yates and his team provide a start-to-finish turnkey service that can switch a building to at least partial reliance on solar power. This is typically accomplished by outfitting the roof with a grid of rectangular solar modules, which convert sunlight into a usable form of energy.
“It’s a tremendous renewable resource, and renewable because the sun’s going to keep burning for however many gazillion years it’s going to burn,” Yates said.
The benefits of installing a solar energy system include lower power bills and reduced environmental impact.
In addition to solar energy systems, Yates said Eagle Solar & Light focuses on the commercial and municipal installation of LED lighting.
Short for light-emitting diode, LED lights use a fraction of the energy, produce a fraction of the heat and last 10 to 20 times longer than incandescent bulbs, Yates said.
“It’s just a very natural fit with renewable energy and energy conservation,” he said.
Although Yates initially researched the solar energy industry in 2011, he said it wasn’t until 2015 that he decided to go all in.
Yates said his interest was piqued last August after his daughter had a solar energy system installed on her home.
“I observed it and asked a lot of questions and then dusted off my due diligence from 2011 and went back into it again,” he said. “After about two months of hitting nothing but green lights on everything that I studied and researched and people I talked to, I said, ‘I’m doing this.’”
Eagle Solar & Light recently completed its first local project: an installation at the Alabama Environmental Council Community Recycling Center on First Avenue South.
Yates said his company’s next confirmed installation will be on the climbing tower at Red Mountain Park. Eagle Solar & Light will equip the structure with three solar modules on top of the tower and LED lighting inside and outside of the tower so that it can operate at night, he said.
“They can generate revenue from patrons at night on the zip line. It’s a perfect application,” Yates said.
For more information on Eagle Solar & Light, call 202-2208, visit eaglesolarandlight.com or find it on Facebook.
