On May 29, Patrick Dempsey, Grey’s Anatomy heartthrob, race car driver and now solar advocate, added Trina Solar Ltd. (NYSE: TSL) to the sponsors of his professional race car team, Dempsey Racing Team. Under the sponsorship, Dempsey Racing, which competes in the GRAND-AM racing series, and Trina will develop a solar charity initiative.

The partnership was unveiled the day that Dempsey Racing competed in the GRAND-AM Memorial Day Classic, a series of races held at the Lakeville, Conn., Lime Rock Park raceway. Under the sponsorship agreement, Dempsey Racing’s drivers, including Dempsey himself, will serve as “solar ambassadors” and will appear at different events, including the Indianapolis 500, according to a Trina press release.

“We want to use that positioning to brand Trina Solar and solar in general,” said a spokesman for Trina. “I think the technology is at the stage, and the market penetration is at the stage, where it is time to reach out to more [people].”

Using a platform like a race-car sponsorship will give the company and the solar industry more of a mass market appeal than what has been done before, according to Trina's spokesman.

The charitable aspect of the agreement hasn’t been hammered out yet, he said.

“I think there’s a number of charities we’ve been looking at. I’m not sure what they’re going to be. I think the details are still coming on that piece,” he said. Such charities could include working with those that install solar on schools or community centers.

As part of Trina’s efforts to increase awareness of its brand, the company also is a sponsor of the Sam Schmidt Motorsports team, a Formula One team. But “this association is expected to elevate the company's brand in North America through the IndyCar series races and wherever the races are shown globally on television, while promoting the wide-scale adoption of sustainable technologies,” the company said in a press release.

Schmidt’s team isn’t doing Trina too bad, either. It won the May 27 Indy Lights Firestone Freedom 100 and had pole position in the Centennial Indy 500 on May 29.

“We had our advertisements on the race yesterday on the Schmidt car,” Trina's spokesman said. “We had a lot of good exposure on the pole position car.”