GLENDALE, Wis. - Tapping the sun's rays for electricity has remained a small niche in the alternative energy arena.

But with industry forecasts showing the market tripling or more over the next decade, Wisconsin's largest company wants to help shift perceptions so that energy from the sun is cast in a new, and more mainstream, light.

Johnson Controls Inc. is rolling out new solar kits designed to make it easy for a school district or other customer to add some solar to their energy mix.

"This is our attempt just to take the mystery out of it" for customers, said Don Albinger, director of renewable energy programs for Johnson Controls. "It's meant to give them their first taste" of solar and their first chance to see their utility electric meter spinning in reverse, he said.

The kits will target colleges, school districts and local governments that are looking to showcase their renewable energy efforts.

The company is also looking to highlight renewable power at its revamped headquarters campus in Glendale and possibly at its downtown Milwaukee office.

The headquarters expansion is part of a broader drive by Johnson Controls to tap demand for energy-saving technologies in buildings and vehicles. The company is forecasting it will add 60,000 jobs worldwide over the next five years - and expand its local work force by 16 percent, or 450 jobs.

At the headquarters campus, the state's largest solar-power project will take shape over the next year. But what's buried will also be tapped for "green" power: Underneath the solar field will be a network of geothermal energy fields, tapping more than 270 wells that will use groundwater to cool and heat the 33-acre campus, said Johnson Controls spokesman Dennis Kois.

"This whole place is going to be a showcase for what we can do," he said. "That's what it's all about."

A recent stroll through the construction site found little to suggest that this will be a renewable energy powerhouse.

For contractor Webster & Son Inc., the dirty work of drilling wells more than 300 feet deep hardly seems to fit into the category of a "green job." Wearing giant waterproof boots, the workers get doused regularly by muddy tan muck that oozes from the holes being dug around them.

The job's so filthy that Johnson Controls had trouble finding enough well diggers, said Tony Kim, a project manager on the construction project.

But by the time the geothermal system opens next year, those wells will be pumping groundwater from below the Earth's surface into heating and cooling systems that will reduce winter heating costs by 29 percent, the company projects.

As part of a renewable energy business launched in 2007, Johnson Controls is attempting to convince its customers across the country to incorporate solar or other types of renewable power when they're retrofitting an office building or constructing a new factory.

With the price of fossil fuels bringing up the price of coal and natural gas, the payback times are shortening for renewable energy projects, experts say.

Albinger views renewable energy as a complement to the company's core business of building efficiency technology that helps reduce energy use. Though retrofits of lighting and control systems and sensors can eliminate much energy use, they can't eliminate everything, and solar power could be used to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

"Every energy efficiency project that we're involved with should have a solar component to it," he said.

The company's renewable energy customers range from school districts in Illinois to the Twentynine Palms Marine Base in California, which is using an 8-acre solar installation and other technologies to save a projected $7 million per year in energy costs.

If anything's holding the company back in moving faster in developing its renewable energy business, it's a lack of qualified people in the field.

"I've got 80 openings for energy engineers around the country right now," Albinger said. "I can't find them."

Across the world, solar is on the verge of big growth. A forecast issued earlier this year by Clean Edge, a clean-technology consulting firm, found solar power will grow from a $20 billion industry worldwide last year to $74 billion within 10 years.

For Johnson Controls, renewable energy is still secondary to its main business of providing energy-saving technologies in buildings.

As energy prices rise, demand grows for technologies to save energy. Analysts project that demand will help Johnson Controls' Milwaukee-based building-efficiency business post healthy sales growth when the company announces its quarterly earnings Thursday. Analysts expect the company to post profit growth of 13 percent and record sales of nearly $10 billion in the quarter.

The new headquarters will highlight both renewable energy and energy efficiency. Together the changes are projected to save Johnson Controls 75 percent on its operating costs from the new headquarters, even as the amount of office space on the 33-acre campus nearly doubles.

In one building, daylight streams through skylights. A wall of windows has replaced an old design that contained little glass.

The offices feature a system that automatically adjusts lighting levels as the amount of daylight pouring in fluctuates, said Kim. It also brightens lighting at a work station when it senses that an employee has entered a work area.