About Starfire Energy

• Page Contents
• About Starfire Energy
• Community Involvement
• About Our People
• About Our Logo

Starfire Energy was founded by Jennifer and Joe Beach to realize their vision of making sustainable energy a reality. It is realizing that vision by providing solar energy systems to people for their homes and businesses.

Starfire Energy supports the growth and success of the renewable energy industry in Colorado by being a member of the Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association (CoSEIA), the Colorado Renewable Energy Society (CRES), the Colorado Energy Science Center (CESC), and the American Solar Energy Society (ASES).

Community Involvement

Starfire Energy supports solar energy education in the community. We are part of the CRES Speakers Bureau, which local groups can contact to provide speakers at their meetings to discuss solar energy, energy efficiency, and other "sustainability" topics. We are also part of the Advisory Board to help Red Rocks Community College develop a training program for solar electric and solar thermal installer and system designers. We also helped group of high school students at the Denver School of Science and Technology to design and build a solar charged electric go-kart for their senior project. We provided solar panels and advice, and they applied their ingenuity and enthusiasm to successfully complete the project.

The students (Alexandra Scherble, Chris Torres, and Jay Wellman) did a great job finding the right mentors, parts, and concepts to have a successful project. They combined a recumbent tricycle from CU-Boulder, a motor and battery from a commercial electric scooter, and two solar panels and a charge controller from Starfire Energy to make a working solar charged vehicle. A photo of them with their creation taken by the Stapleton Front Porch newspaper is shown at the right. Their work was featured in an article in the June 2008 issue. You can see a video of one the students driving their finished project in front of the school here. We were also treated to test drives of the vehicle, and it was quite fun to zip around in it. Alexandra, Chris, and Jay all graduated from Denver School of Science and Technology in the spring of 2008, with plans to attend college at CU-Boulder.

About Our People

Jennifer Beach has been trained by Solar Energy International in photovoltaic system design and solar thermal system design. She has a Masters degree in Technology Management from Denver University, is a certified as a Project Management Professional by Project Management International, and has over a decade of project management experience on projects with budgets ranging from tens of thousands of dollars to tens of millions of dollars. She has also served as President of the Rocky Mountain Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association and as an Honorary Director of the United States Hang Gliding Association. She strongly believes that we need to transition from hydrocarbon energy sources to ones that do not emit carbon dioxide. Her project management and business skills help to achieve this goal by ensuring that Starfire Energy provides high quality, high value solar energy installations for its customers.

Joe Beach has been trained by Solar Energy International in photovoltaic system design and by Energy Logic in home energy rating assessments. He has a Doctoral degree in Applied Physics from Colorado School of Mines and has been performing research on sustainable energy technologies for over a decade. He continues his research endeavors at Starfire Energy and also as an Associate Research Professor in the Physics Department at the Colorado School of Mines. He enjoys the combination of working at Starfire Energy and Colorado School of Mines because it gives him a "full spectrum" view of the solar energy industry, from laboratory research to power-generating installations. He is a proponent of distributed energy generation because it can increase the robustness of our electrical grid and it can make people more conscious of what it takes to produce the energy they consume.

About Our Logo

The spiral in the body of the sun on our logo is a depiction of the Maori koru symbol. The koru is based on the unfurling of a fern frond, and represents creation or new beginnings. Starfire Energy seeks to establish a new way of sustainably powering our society. We are creating the change we want to see in the world. The photo to the right shows an unfurling fern frond. It is provided courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons, a wonderful project that lets people share their creativity. The photo can be redistributed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License Version 1.2 or later.

Contact us at 303-363-7848, we're happy to help you start using clean electricity!