With the summer Olympics ready to start, little girls are thinking leotards. And this time, the ones their parents buy could be made with solar power. Ledona Snow, who owns Snowflake Leotards, flipped the switch on the third phase of a solar photovoltaic array on the rooftop of her manufacturing facility in California.

Tom Cotter, Real Goods Solar regional sales manager for central California, said he met Snow three to four years ago. She wanted to go solar. But the budget wasn’t there to do the whole project at once. “I think she decided to work with us because we could work with her,” Cotter said.

Rather than install enough solar on Snow’s rooftop to run her whole operation at once, they spread the project out into phases so Snow could take advantage of the tax credit each year. “We have installed more each year according to their tax appetite,” Cotter said.

Snow started Snowflake Designs in her home and installed a solar hot water heater there. She’s always been interested in building a sustainable business. “They’re just really nice people,” Cotter said. “It’s very important to her that she treat her employees fairly and she just makes good ethical choices for her business.”

Going solar for Snow was about more than saving on her energy bill, Cotter said. “But you can’t go solar just because you want to do the right thing for the environment, It doesn’t work that way. It has to make sense financially, too.”

That’s where Real Goods solar came in, he said. The company, which focuses on residential and small commercial rooftop solar photovoltaic installations worked hard to find a way for Snow to achieve her goal of going solar and operating her business in the most sustainable and ethical way possible without breaking the bank.

Cotter said he’s not sure if Snow will install more. The system as it is now supplies most of the electricity Snowflake needs. But he said the building does have a fourth meter and there is room for her to install another phase.