New Mexico Solar Energy Association (NMSEA)

The New Mexico Solar Energy Association is a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit and the New Mexico state chapter of ASES (the American Solar Energy Society). It is the institutional descendant of the same New Mexico passive-solar movement this archive documents — Steve Baer helped found it in 1972 and published in its newsletter for decades.

Founding (1972)

NMSEA was co-founded in 1972 at Ghost Ranch by Keith Haggard — whom the ASES regional history calls “the principal founder” — with Peter Van Dresser and Steve Baer. The founders hosted the first “Life Technic” conference at Ghost Ranch the same year with over 50 members; the proceedings became NMSEA’s first publication. Van Dresser served as first president and Keith Haggard as executive director — a contemporaneous July 1977 High Country News item names “Keith Haggard, the founder and executive director” while he held the post. (Earlier versions of this wiki “corrected” the obituary’s “Keith Haggard” to Ken Haggard, the Cal Poly architect; that was a conflation of two different people — see Keith Haggard.) Doug Balcomb, later the first NREL Director, went on to serve as an NMSEA President.

This founding places NMSEA at the institutional root of New Mexico’s role as the birthplace of modern passive-solar practice — the same milieu that produced the Baer House and Zomeworks.

Mission and programs

NMSEA’s stated mission is “to educate, empower, advocate, and collaborate for clean renewable energy.” Its public-education work includes:

• Curriculum: Going Solar, Energy 101, and Solar Basics — covering photovoltaics, solar thermal, passive solar, and solar cooking
• School outreach: the Sun Chaser educational trailer and SunCatcher school visits; renewable-energy lectures and Kill-A-Watt classroom materials
• Community demonstrations: solar-cooking demos, passive-solar architecture showcases, and agrivoltaic field trips
• Advocacy: Climate Solutions Day at the New Mexico Roundhouse and community-solar support

Recurring events include the Solar Fiesta, participation in the National Solar Tour, Earth Day demonstrations, and an annual meeting.

The SunPaper

NMSEA publishes the SunPaper newsletter, a recurring venue for Baer’s writing across at least two decades. The earliest SunPaper piece in the archive is Baer’s “Cooling with Night Air” (SUNPAPER, January 1984) — a night-ventilation analysis with Baer House temperature data from August 1983, written from Zomeworks’ earlier 1221 Edith NE address. Two later archive pieces also trace to it: Baer’s argument for unglazed collectors (SunPaper, March/April 2003) and the pump-free thermosiphon shower field test he documented for the association. The SunPaper is a primary channel through which Baer’s passive-solar thinking reached a regional audience.

Albuquerque / Los Ranchos relevance

NMSEA’s activities center on the Albuquerque and Los Ranchos area, and it already partners with North Valley farms — Los Poblanos and the Rio Grande Community Farm — a short distance from the Larry P. Abraham Agri-Nature Center. That existing footprint, plus its turnkey school-outreach programs and direct lineage back to Baer, makes NMSEA the natural education and programming partner for the proposed Double Play demonstration building at the Agri-Nature Center.

Website: nmsolar.org · Contact: P.O. Box 3434, Albuquerque, NM 87190 · [email protected]

See also

• Promoting passive thermal technology
• Steve Baer — co-founder
• Peter Van Dresser — co-founder
• Keith Haggard — principal founder and first executive director
• Solar Fools — the present-day community continuing Baer’s work
• unglazed collectors — SunPaper article
• thermosiphon — SunPaper field test
• Zomeworks
• William Lumpkins — Sun-dwellings design-team member
• Bristol Stickney — 17-year NMSEA Staff Engineer through Associate Director
• J. Douglas Balcomb — LANL passive-solar researcher who chaired the association
• Frank Bridgers — pioneering New Mexico solar engineer; Janet Bridgers has served on the NMSEA board since 2007
• Life Technic conference (1972) — the founding conference at Ghost Ranch whose proceedings became NMSEA’s first publication
• Ghost Ranch — Abiquiu site of the 1972 founding and the Sun-dwellings test units
• Index

Sources

• New Mexico Solar Energy Association — nmsolar.org — mission, programs, events, partnerships (fetched 2026-07-13)
• Corrales Comment — Baer obituary — 1972 founding at Ghost Ranch with Van Dresser and Haggard (rendered “Keith” there)
• “Cooling with Night Air” — Steve Baer, SUNPAPER, January 1984 — earliest SunPaper piece in the archive