Stone Edge Founder Pioneered Microgrids in Sonoma
A month ago, on October 22, John “Mac” McQuown finally ran out of energy, an event that some who knew him, or merely admired him, found a little hard to believe.
Universally known as Mac, John Andrew McQuown was a pioneer, a wide-ranging thinker, a practical pragmatist, a visionary giant in the investment world and a devout environmentalist who developed quite possibly the world’s first and best private, truly autonomous, micro-energy grid at his 16-acre Stone Edge Farm on the western edge of Sonoma.
The man Bloomberg News credited with starting “a $12 trillion financial revolution” after creating the first index fund, frequently referred to himself as an anarchist, saying he had more faith in private, personal enterprise than in government. Mac was 90 when he passed away in Sonoma, but the energy he unleashed through his lifetime of relentless curiosity promises to continue expanding, like the universe he studied through his 20-inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope in the celestial observatory he constructed not far from the organic vineyard that borders his organic produce garden which borders the room-sized, solar-powered electrolyzer for splitting hydrogen from water, thus creating hundreds of kilograms of hydrogen per day.
The hydrogen, in concert with solar panels, fuel cells, storage batteries and – only as a triple-redundant last resort – a backup gas turbine, permits Stone Edge Farm, and all its ancillary activities, to function autonomously and, presumably, forever off the grid – the big one, with letters like PG&E.
To do that, Mac tracked down and hired Craig Wooster, a brilliant, ebullient engineering savant, utterly committed to exploring the outer limits of energy efficiency. Mac and Wooster were an ideal match, combining a shared and evolving vision to take existing technology as far as they could stretch it, in an ideal location, and with enough financial heft to do whatever heavy lifting the goal required. They had, in effect, a giant sandbox in which to play, and in which they came to the conclusion that, despite the current cost benefit of solar energy, hydrogen is the energy wave of the future.
The hardware for this passionate pursuit is one thing – more or less off-the-shelf, albeit uniquely conjoined – but it is the power management system running the place that has put Stone Edge on an international map, drawing attention and site visits from scientists, developers, politicians, academics, engineers and interns, from industry, government and academia. A control system tying together 23 different chunks of technology into an integrated, coordinated whole, is restlessly evolving toward ever-greater efficiency. And all of it is open-source, available for the world to see for free.
But the McQuown ethos extends far beyond the efficient management of electrons. Every element of Stone Edge Farm – the buildings, the gardens, the vineyards, the water system, the pavement, the paths, the use of native stones – is designed and engineered for maximum efficiency and minimum impact on the environment. Every thing that grows is organic. Water systems are completely engineered, with soil moisture probes, flow meters and expert surveillance so that no water is wasted and rainfall is funneled back into the ground.
And because the entire 16 acres is, in every sense of the word, organic, there are collateral benefits, Mac told me in a 2019 interview. “So,” he said, “we have an amazing assortment of birds…And they’ve figured out they can eat anything. We don’t have any pesticides, we don’t use any artificial fertilizers. We use our own compost to recycle back into the gardens. You don’t think the birds understand that? They understand that completely.”
He spoke with a direct, declarative voice, reflecting his roots on the 1,200-acre family farm where he grew up, near Sandwich, Illinois, a small town about 60 miles southwest of Chicago. Early on he was fascinated with farm equipment and figuring out how things worked, an interest that guided his entire life. He attended Northwestern University, earning a degree in mechanical engineering, got an MBA at Harvard, spent two years as a Naval officer. He then paired his engineering expertise with the emerging computer technology to turn data analysis into a dependable investment science, liberating investment strategy from personal hunches and insider information. He co-founded Wells Fargo Investment Advisors, started or co-started at least a dozen other companies in financial services, technology and wine, and tinkered with energy technology at Stone Edge. He served on the director’s council for the Scripps Institution of Technology in San Diego, which inspired in him a heightened sense of urgency about addressing climate change.
He was convinced that massively distributed microgrid technology would eventually eliminate the power monopoly of giant utility companies, with single homes and neighborhoods generating all their own power. “There aren’t going to be any utilities by the time your grandkids are full grown,” he told me. “There will be no utility grids.”
He had great faith in science and common sense, telling me that climate change “is just a problem of figuring out what’s going on. And when you figure it out, solving it.”
Mac McQuown the man is gone now, but his legacy will continue at Stone Edge Farm, and in energy labs and microgrids all around the world.
By David Bolling
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