By Mark Bettis, vice president of sales, Alta Energy, Inc.
I have been asked many times over my career how to tell if a given company or site is a good fit for the deployment of a renewable energy system. The question has come from sales representatives and other coworkers working to qualify leads as well as from prospective customers who wish to figure out whether they should invest in a solar project. This is a key topic in the solar industry, as knowing the answer can save companies on both sides of the project development process from investing time and money into projects that never go through. It’s easy to say that solar makes sense everywhere, and that the more solar-equipped roofs the better. In reality, however, it’s not a simple question, and answering this basic inquiry requires time, resources and a great deal of expertise.
The C&I solar challenge
Solar energy is gaining momentum in the commercial and industrial (C&I) space as corporate sustainability initiatives and favorable economics snowball. But not every company and not every site is a good fit. For each potential project there is a complex landscape of site particulars that must be assessed: government incentives, utility rate structures, interconnection rules, corporate goals, hurdle rates, local building codes and other decision criteria.
Trying to navigate the complex layers of a feasibility study can make determining whether a project is viable a daunting task indeed. Renewable energy providers must constantly prequalify and evaluate whether new prospective customers are going to have the right mix of attributes to make a project possible. It is often necessary to perform site walks and create multiple proposals before receiving any true indication of whether a project will move forward. Any solar sales manager can tell you that a lot of resources are being spent on projects that are never built. This contributes to high customer acquisition costs, a major pain point for the modern renewable energy contractor.
By the same token, procuring solar and other renewable energy projects is a complex and time consuming effort for the customer as well. An energy or facilities manager who is tasked with exploring renewable energy projects can receive inconsistent proposals from a wide variety of vendors, each promoting their own flavor of technology and/or financing solutions. These proposals often include a wide range of proposed system designs, output predictions, cost estimates and promises of long term energy cost savings.
Vendor proposals may include onsite energy storage, demand charge mitigation, various types of inverters, module optimizers, tracking systems, high or low efficiency solar modules, carports, rooftop systems, leases, PPAs, PACE loans, bank loans, various interpretations of SREC value and assumptions about government incentives.
It ends up requiring a true expert to sort through the various solutions and determine which (if any) course of action makes sense for a given site. This makes it difficult for would-be project champions to move forward with certainty that the chosen solution(s) will be completed on time, meet performance and reliability expectations, and deliver the promised energy cost savings or other financial benefits.
A solution for solar buyers and providers
I recently spoke with a senior energy manager at a Fortune 500 company who has seen more than 40 proposals for solar energy at one or more of his locations. He is not moving forward with any projects at the moment, simply because he does not have the bandwidth or expertise to effectively evaluate the various and inconsistent proposals and decide on the best course of action.
This is where Alta Energy’s unique business model comes in to play. Alta Energy will evaluate the renewable energy potential at a site or group of sites and distill the information into simple criteria which enable a buyer to make informed and rapid decisions. Once a project is determined to be viable, Alta Energy brings in a short list of highly qualified providers to bid on the project, thereby selecting the best vendor for the job. Alta Energy saves customers time and money by streamlining the decision process and ultimately ensuring that the best possible projects are constructed by the best suited suppliers at highly competitive prices.
Alta Energy’s services also benefit solar developers, financiers, integrators and installers. When Alta Energy handles the procurement of a project, the vendors are relieved of the costly qualification process. The professionals at Alta sort through all of the various project details, ensuring that a proposed project is not only technically and economically viable, but also that it meets the end user’s hurdle rates or other decision criteria. When an Alta Energy project is ready for bid, a contractor knows that the project is viable, has been fully vetted and is designed to meet the goals of the buyer. Customer acquisition cost and time are dramatically reduced, contributing directly to the bottom line.
So, all of this being said, how does one know if a given commercial or industrial organization will be a good prospect for your business to successfully develop a solar energy project? There is no simple answer, but engaging a third party like Alta Energy to analyze the situation and create a bridge between corporate buyers and pre-qualified installers can often be the best way to find out.
from Solar Power World http://ift.tt/2bKegbn
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