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As businesses strive to embrace renewable energy as a part of their overall ESG goals, solar offers an efficient and cost-effective pathway for enterprise corporations. Solar adoption has emerged as a clear and compelling strategy, enabling businesses to reduce their carbon footprint while maximizing financial returns. It’s important for enterprise corporations to understand the traditional stages of commercial solar adoption and learn different solutions as they look to deploy solar across their real estate assets. By embracing solar energy with precision and strategic planning, businesses can lead the charge toward a greener and more sustainable future.
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Property Evaluation and Financial Feasibility
To start in the solar adoption process, enterprise corporations must first conduct a thorough evaluation and analysis of their energy consumption patterns across their real estate assets. This includes assessing and auditing utility bills and reviewing energy consumption in kilowatt-hours in a given month throughout the year. Additionally, load profiles at this stage can be examined as well. Reviewing a load profile, which measures the energy consumption levels in hourly or 15-minute intervals, from energy bills provides insight into a business’s energy needs and usage during a given period. Keep in mind that energy consumption patterns change throughout the year including energy rates from the utility companies, as well as, overall consumption at each real estate asset. Next is to analyze the sunlight exposure of properties in a given region. Some real estate assets might be in regions where overall sunlight exposure might be high or low. Another crucial step in the evaluation process is conducting a comprehensive financial analysis. This includes ROI projections, payback periods (breakeven analysis), and cost-benefit analysis. In order to calculate costs in this stage, corporations need total project costs (note that labor costs are different per region area), local incentives, and total energy costs for a given property. Corporations can hire outside sources, like consultants to perform the evaluation and feasibility of properties. This, however, can be timely and costly which will hurt overall project returns which is why using a streamlined solution will help diminish these costs and get projects moving in an efficient manner.
Project Design and Execution
After the evaluation and feasibility of properties are determined, enterprise corporations need quality solar designs and engineering plans to start executing projects. This stage involves having the go-to engineering knowledge and planning expertise to get projects moving efficiently. This can be done by placing out a request for proposal (RFP) from multiple engineering, procurement, and construction solar companies (EPC). This process will take an immense amount of time as trying to receive proposals from multiple vendors can be daunting. Navigating the landscape of utility companies can be complex without professional knowledge or guidance. Different solar solutions can assist enterprises in securing approvals efficiently, minimizing delays, and expediting the installation process.
Operation Maintenance and Expansion
Once solar projects are completed, real-time monitoring systems become indispensable tools for enterprises to track their solar system’s performance. These monitoring platforms provide real-time data on energy generation, consumption, and system health, enabling businesses to proactively address any issues that may arise. Regular maintenance is vital to solar success as it ensures the longevity of solar assets, Periodic inspections and cleaning as part of operation and maintenance packages allow the continuous and efficient operation of solar installations. As enterprises begin to see the positive impacts solar adoption has on their real estate portfolio and for their internal and external stakeholders, the process doesn’t end here. Businesses can derive valuable insights and analysis to inform future installations. This ensures continuous improvement, as well as, driving the strategic expansion of solar adoption across real estate assets, further solidifying the organization’s commitment to sustainability.
Embracing energy with precision and strategic planning empowers enterprise corporations to make a lasting impact on the environment while harnessing significant financial returns. By knowing the stages of commercial solar adoption, enterprises can decide and choose solutions that help efficiently deploy solar across their real estate portfolio, driving sustainability and leading towards a cleaner and more sustainable future. Using a software and service solution can help enterprises efficiently meet these goals. SolBid’s Platform and service solutions allow businesses to quickly design solar projects, and receive a full financial pro forma while receiving services such as project bidding, engineering, utility application submittals, procurement, and full-service operations and maintenance plans.
