Where Did the Carter White House's Solar Panels Go?—Scientific American Article

Jimmy Carter: The “Solar President”—image courtesy of the Solar Tribune

in 1986 the Reagan administration quietly dismantled the White House solar panel installation while resurfacing the roof. "Hey! That system is working. Why don't you keep it?" recalls mechanical engineer Fred Morse, now of Abengoa Solar, who helped install the original solar panels as director of the solar energy program during the Carter years and then watched as they were dismantled during his tenure in the same job under Reagan. "Hey! This whole [renewable] R&D program is working, why don't you keep it?"

After they came down it took a soft-spoken administrator from a small environmental college in Maine to rescue the Carter panels from being a forgotten curiosity stored in the dark corner of a vast government warehouse.

A long, strange trip
In 1991 Peter Marbach was newly minted development director at Unity College in Maine, which was facing a severe budget crisis. Marbach needed to find a way to bring attention—and hopefully donations—to the struggling college and its mission: environmental education.