Toledo's Solar Success Story: Steps for Building a Tech Cluster in a Mid-Sized Region

Last week, the Board of Trustees at the University of Toledo approved the creation of a School of Solar and Advanced Renewable Energy. The School will integrate faculty from multiple science, engineering, and business disciplines to offer its own degrees and perform collaborative research, often with industrial partners associated with the region's established solar energy and photovoltaics cluster.

Building a cluster of academic and industrial research can happen without policy interventions; however, Toledo's situation is different. The region's leadership in advanced renewable energy is the result of deliberate choices and continual injections of funding by a host of public and private partners. So how did Toledo do it?

The maturation of Toledo's advanced energy cluster is rooted in the actions of a handful of entrepreneurial researchers. When paired with the resources from regional, state, and federal entities, in addition to the knowledge base from existing industries, the solar energy cluster eventually grew to employ thousands of people in Northwest Ohio. In the last year alone, five photovoltaic startup manufacturers have sprung up in Toledo, joining a base that already includes some of the largest solar manufacturing facilities in the U.S.

While the major milestones to advancing the photovoltaic industry in Toledo occurred within the last 20 years, the pioneers in the new industry came from an existing strength: the glass industry. The glass industry in Toledo grew rapidly in the early 20th century. The demand for sheet glass, fiberglass, and glass for automobiles in nearby Detroit contributed to this growth.

In 1948 Harold McMaster, a physicist often referred to as the father of the solar industry in Toledo, left one company and started his own firm that produced tempered glass with the property of crumbling upon impact, instead of shattering into large pieces. Almost 40 years later, McMaster formed a new company, collaborating with the University of Toledo for technical needs, soon operating Toledo's first solar manufacturing plant. In 1987, the University of Toledo (UT) hired Dr. Alvin Compaan, and research specifically in the thin-film photovoltaics sector developed into the core of the region's solar efforts.

Key steps of this cluster's development include:

• 1989 - First federal research funds in solar energy field to Toledo awarded; funds from the Deptartment of Energy's Solar Energy Research Institute;
• 1989 - Ohio Department of Development Edison program awards UT funds, when matched by local industry, builds tech infrastructure leading to faculty recruitment;
• 2001 - UT identifies renewable energy as an area to focus resources, creating an endowed chair position;
• 2002 - NSF awards $600,000 Partnership for Innovation grant that promotes photovoltaic outreach to industry and regional connectivity;
• 2003 - State of Ohio awards $2 million to create Center for Photovoltaic Electricity and Hydrogen;
• 2005 - Clean and Renewable Business Incubator started on UT campus;
• 2005 - University Clean Energy Alliance of Ohio formed and housed at Incubator;
• 2007 - State of Ohio awards $18.6 million (with $29 million in matching funds from industry) to form Wright Center for Photovoltaic Innovation and Commercialization;
• 2008 - State of Ohio awards $8.9 million in faculty recruitment funds, and when matched UT fills four new faculty positions;
• 2008 - NASA-funded solar cell testing facility opens in Alternative Energy Incubator;
• 2008 - Out of eleven DOE projects for solar research in U.S., UT received two awards totaling $2.5 million;
• 2009 - State of Ohio awards $1.5 million, with 1:1 match by regional academic institutions, to create renewable energy and sustainability STEM education programs.

With the advancement of Toledo's solar energy efforts on many fronts, from research to training to entrepreneurship, the narrative of Toledo is changing  as the national media have focused on the story.

While photovoltaics is only one component of the region's economy in aggregate, the development of this sector in Toledo illustrates the need for communities wanting to grow their economies to engage local industry, to promote research entrepreneurs, to find partnerships at the state and federal level, and to celebrate successes.

SSTI would like to thank D'Naie Jacobs, Associate Director for Economic Development at the University of Toledo for providing background material for this article. Sources used in the article's preparation include: "The Role of an Antecedent Cluster, Academic R&D and the Role of Entrepreneurship in the Development of Toledo's Solar Energy Cluster" by Frank Calzonetti, 2006; "Transforming The Glass City into the Solar City," 2008, http://www.ssti.org/posters/images/posters/ut.pdf "Panel Discussion on Focused Clusters" by Al Compaan, 2009; and, "Northwest Ohio's Position as a Leader in Photovoltaics," 2009.