James Spencer finds the right business mix with EverPower Wind

 
On a recent morning at his office in the Strip District of Pittsburgh, James Spencer apologized for being tired. He had to make two separate business trips to the United Kingdom in one month and was jet lagged.
“But I am getting over it,” says Spencer, the CEO and founder of privately held EverPower Wind Holdings Inc., now the nation’s 20th largest wind power developer, owner and operator.
Spencer, who has a law degree from the University of Pittsburgh, did not start out in the renewable energy business. Instead, the Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, native found himself working as an attorney in New York City on behalf of investors in the fossil fuel industry, both as a manager and developer of energy projects.
Then, the entrepreneur bug bit.
In 2002, shortly after the World Trade Centers bombing, Spencer and his business partners, Andrew Golembeski and Kevin Sheen, got together at Spencer’s New York City home and started brainstorming about starting a renewable energy business.
That was how the first evolution of EverPower began — as a developer of solar energy. The decision turned out to be a good idea, but the timing wasn’t right.
“What we didn’t think about at the time was how long it would take for us to make money,” Spencer says. “We spoke to everyone about solar power, the Noguchi Museum in Brooklyn, the New York Power Authority. We even said we would do it for a subsidy.”
No one, however, was interested, he says. Plus, solar panels, at the time, were not efficient and the necessary regulatory support for solar energy was nonexistent.
“People probably thought their roofs would catch on fire,” says Spencer, with a laugh, recalling the early days of EverPower.
The company spent $2 million trying to develop various solar projects and ended up doing two in five years. Like many young companies, the challenges were harder than expected.
Something had to be done.
Spencer and his partners literally found their answer blowing in the wind — by focusing on wind farms.

The power of wind

Wind power captures natural wind and converts it into mechanical energy and then into electricity, according to the American Wind Energy Association, a Washington, D.C.-based trade association for the U.S. wind industry.
The wind blows past a turbine, which can stand 325 feet tall and has three giant fan-like blades. When the blades begin to rotate, that rotation starts to spin an internal shaft inside the turbine. That shaft is connected to a gearbox, which increases the speed of the rotation, and to a generator that produces the electricity.
A group of turbines is called a wind farm, and the turbines are connected to each other so electricity can travel from the wind farm to the power grid. When that electrical power is on the grid, energy companies can then deliver the electricity where it is needed.
By the end of 2013, the U.S. had more than 46,000 operating wind turbines in 39 states and Puerto Rico, which generated 61,110 megawatts of power — enough to power homes in six states, according to the association.
One large turbine has the ability to provide electricity for 600 homes.
Wind power now accounts for 4.1 percent of the electricity in the country, a number that is growing, in light of the national — and international — push for clean energy.

Patience is key

This time around the timing was better, and Spencer and his partners ended up relocating EverPower to Pittsburgh to be closer to areas with high concentrations of wind such as the central part of the state, which is mainly rural.
But like other industries with high initial investment, developing a wind farm is not something that can be done quickly, Spencer says. The process can take years before it comes to fruition.