Journal of Sustainability

By Rose Marie Kern, rmk@swcp.com

”I was surprised by the lack of respect for women in the trade.”

Marlene Brown is an Electrical Engineer and a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Labs.  Winner of the 2009 American Solar Energy Society’s “Women in Solar” award, she is a past President of the New Mexico Solar Energy Assn. as well as the New Mexico Solar Energy Industries Association and contributes many hours promoting renewable energy technology as a career choice for women.

Marlene first studied energy systems in an interdisciplinary program at the Evergreen State College in Washington State.  After graduating she became an Energy Auditor in Massachusetts.  “Unfortunately, I discovered that middle and upper class people didn’t really care about saving energy. “

She moved to Washington, D.C. and began working with low-income families.  Here her efforts paid off as she saw her work make a difference in the poorer communities.

But Marlene was restless and wished to continue learning and growing in new directions. On vacation in Jamaica, she met a man who made the field of solar energy come alive, and told her of the Colorado Mountain College in Carbondale, Colorado, where she could study PV. 

She took a two-week course there over the summer, liked Colorado and the course so much that she moved there and earned a certificate in Energy Efficient Building Technologies.

She started working in the construction field, but was surprised at the lack of respect she noted for women in the trade.  Going to work for Zomeworks in Albuquerque, she went back to school at UNM and TVI (now called CNM), eventually getting her Master’s in Electrical Engineering and her certificate in the electrical trades. 

During this time she also began working with the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF)– an international organization that empowers developing countries and arranges for them to use Solar Energy to bring electricity to villages where lights, radios and consistent contact with the outside world have never been available. 

In 1993, SELF hired Marlene to go to Vietnam.  There she trained members of the Vietnam Women’s Union in the basics of Photovoltaics.

 Marlene described the adventure. “I trudged or canoed through the jungle to 4 small villages where I installed 100 PV systems in 5 days.”  A glutton for punishment, she repeated this feat two years later in Vietnam and in the Soloman Islands. 

Back in New Mexico, Marlene went to work for Sandia Labs.  Though previously familiar with NMSEA, the American Solar Energy Society’s ’98 Solar conference in Albuquerque convinced her to work with the local chapter to forward the education of the public.

Marlene teaches coed and women-only classes in photovoltaics several times a year throughout the U.S.  She is convinced that this is a viable and important career field for women.

“Renewable Energy technology is further along than ever”, Marlene notes, “and it really has gone mainstream.”  She sites the programs in several California cities and other cities in the U.S. that have made a dramatic difference in the local environments.  She felt that for a long time, politically we lost ground as the government reduced funding for Renewable energy research and development.

That has significantly changed since the Obama administration has taken over.

“In Europe, RE is automatically rolled into household mortgages.  Here we used to struggle just to get people to understand that they have options. She believes that there are now significant options for people that want PV or solar hot water.

“We are finally seeing some significant mechanisms to help finance solar.”

Marlene understands how energy affects people’s lives.  She has seen the excitement of the first light bulb ever glowing in remote villages, and she has known the gratitude of people whose every cent counts towards their quality of life.

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