How This Off-Grid Aggie Is Leading the Renewable Energy Movement

Whether it was fate or not, the decision to enroll at the university, followed by the opportunity to switch his major to environmental design, changed his life trajectory almost immediately. “Texas A&M opened my horizons and introduced me to people I wouldn’t ever have met otherwise,” he said.

College was strenuous, and not just academically. Sellers worked hard outside of school to pay for his education, including spending a summer on a fishing boat in Alaska. Working to maintain and repair the boat's generators was not completely foreign to the 19-year-old, having worked on diesel engines in his youth. But it was there that he managed a DC battery system for the first time. He also learned the ins and outs of the vessel’s freshwater, seawater and waste systems. It proved to be a valuable experience, not just for the wages he earned but for the way it transformed his design approach. “I live on this boat; I cook on this boat. It’s got everything that I need,” he remembers thinking. And then the lightbulb moment: “I can put all these systems into a house.”

The relationships that he formed with his classmates and professors at Texas A&M were just as important. During his senior year, Sellers teamed up with his friend Patrick Winn ’02 to fabricate a 40-foot inverted box truss tower that stood in the atrium of the College of Architecture for nearly a decade. Winn’s design was inspired by emeritus professor Alan Stacell, and the massive student-led project (a highlight of Sellers’ academic career) was supported by Dr. Rodney Hill.
 

Like scaffolding on a building, many other professors supported the young architecture student along the way, opening his mind further to systems-thinking processes. For instance, professor Taeg Nishimoto recommended he attend graduate school internationally at one of the world’s best-ranked architecture programs, and Dean J. Thomas Regan provided critical mentorship and encouragement. A token of his faith in Sellers’ abilities, Regan even offered him his first job out of college running the wood and metal shop for the College of Architecture.

Raising the Bar

Several years and one bachelor’s degree later, Sellers was finishing up his master’s thesis at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands when he received an intriguing email from a friend. “I saw a job posting, and you’re the only guy that fits this description,” he wrote. A company in Hawaii was looking for someone who knew how to manage construction projects with remote operations and logistics. Experience with boat mechanics and maintenance was a plus. Sellers applied, and they offered to fly him out to Hawaii for an interview

He saw that, at the time, Hawaii was the only state in the U.S. that had made the commitment to become 100% renewable by 2045. “I realized I had the opportunity to work in a new and emerging industry that has now surpassed every other form of generating energy as the cheapest, most economical way,” Sellers said. He knew he wanted to be part of the effort — and moving from rainy, 45-degree weather to a tropical paradise didn’t sound too bad either.

In his role with the Nature Conservancy of Hawaii, Sellers managed a world-renowned research station on the remote Palmyra Atoll, transitioning its energy source to a renewable microgrid. The project saved the program over $1 million annually. It was there that he met civil engineer Jake Freeman, with whom he co-founded the architecture firm he leads today, Hawaii Off Grid.

Crafting Off-Grid Solutions

Since 2015, the firm has only grown, and its impact on the community is undeniable.

The renovated 100-year-old pineapple cannery where the firm is based is home to several small business offices, including multiple surfboard manufacturers. One fateful day, Sellers was taking out the office trash. When he lifted the lid of the dumpsters, he realized they were completely full of Styrofoam. But Sellers saw more than just surfboard scraps — he saw potential.

Years earlier, he had worked on a project in Washington helping a fellow Aggie build his family home using insulated composite concrete forms made from Styrofoam and cement. “If we could use this Styrofoam to make those blocks here, we wouldn’t have to ship them from the mainland,” Sellers thought. The blocks were high performance, relatively inexpensive and earthquake resistant. “At the time I didn’t think much of it, but they’re also fire resistant,” he said.