Harness Energy makes the move to Niwot

Harness Energy is a small business that provides meteorological measurement services to renewable energy developers and operators across North America. They will be moving their headquarters to Niwot next month, in the former Excel Electric Building on 2nd Avenue.

LHVC had a chance to catch up with co-founder Taj Capozolla for a brief interview, which has been edited for length.

LHVC: Tell us about yourself.

Taj: I originally came out here to Colorado for the skiing and the outdoors. I'm from Long Island and it was my lifelong dream to get out and ski the Rocky Mountains. I came out here and obviously just fell in love with the environment and people.

Through that, I started developing an interest in renewable energy. It wasn't really anything I was exposed to on the East Coast. I was trying to figure out how to be a part of the solution and not continue to contribute to the problem of climate change.

I was originally trying to get into solar in developing countries in rural and remote communities. Along the way, I fell into the opportunity of putting up meteorological towers.

Back in 2008, with a couple of friends and colleagues, we decided to go on our own and start Harness.

Between when I moved out here and now, it's been a ride of living up in the mountains for a number of years, on the front range, earning an MBA at CU, and bouncing between Boulder and Denver.

LHVC: What does Harness Energy do?

Taj: We install meteorological equipment to collect data for utility scale wind and solar energy developers. Early on in the pre-feasibility study process, understanding the true resource available at that location for a wind farm-it's primarily wind speed and duration and direction and intensity-and for solar it's solar irradiance.

There exist a variety of atmospheric models to help make predictions on how much electricity could be generated over the life of that power plant.

Onsite data is necessary to reduce the uncertainty of those models and those measurements and those predictions.

Developers will work with some of our partners who do the data analysis and energy analysis, and hire us to come in and set up those measurement tools.

For wind, that is generally 60 or 80-meter or taller towers with instruments on them to collect wind speed and wind direction and other atmospheric data. Now we're using remote sensing, so lidar [light detection and ranging] and sodar [full sonic detection and ranging] technology to do the same thing, but with light and sound versus with physical cup anemometry.

On the solar side we deploy and manage ground based solar measurement stations that are measuring solar irradiance [the output of light energy in a particular location], and also measuring reflected solar irradiance now with so many stations going to bifacial panels.

Essentially for large scale wind and solar, we're setting up and managing and maintaining all those measurement tools in the field, and moving them around. It takes us all over the country and around the world.

The majority of our clients are private companies and private developers, but we also do a number of projects with NREL [the National Renewable Energy Laboratory] and have gone to other countries to help with countrywide mapping campaigns and information generation initiatives.

We recently completed a project in Bangladesh where we set up about eight towers throughout the country, a USAID project that NREL managed.

LHVC: How did you get involved in this?

Taj: Kind of by chance in the beginning. Largely it was right place at the right time, and meeting the right people, and just being open to opportunity in the renewable space. Meeting people that were like minded that were doing this work.

I learned from someone in the business who had been doing it for a long time. Got my technical training that way. Myself and the two other founders of Harness, we were all in the field doing that together. We took that technical expertise and a variety of other skills to start turning it into a viable business.

Over the last 12 years, we've plodded along and grown gradually and organically and refined our processes along the way, expanded into different measurement technologies and sectors of the industry, things like that.

LHVC: What prompted you to move to Niwot?

Taj: We had been at this location in north Denver for the last six years, and we were needing room to expand and have a place for us to grow in the future.

I live in the Boulder area, and my wife grew up in Boulder. We recently moved back to this area. We had always had it in our mind that eventually we'd be able to bring the business back to this area.

It's a place we are aligned well with, and we have a deep love for. It's a balance and quality of life that really aligns well with who we are and the culture of our company that we're trying to build.

We've always felt like we were never a part of a community or part of a place. I think we found that we wanted to try to fix that. We were looking for a place where we could feel like we could make an impact and we could get to know people.

We saw Niwot as a place-we love the small town feel, we love the feel of main street there-and thinking about having a place where our families can come and we can have that good work life balance. We thought it was a good fit.

The building is a step up for us, which is nice for sure. It's funny how things line up and work out sometimes.

We're excited to be here, excited to get to know people in the community, excited to be a part of things. We hope it works out for us all.