How We Work
Three Quotes on the Kitchen Table and No Way to Compare Them.
Different system sizes, different equipment, different assumptions about your usage. That's the position most operations are in when they call us — and it isn't a pricing problem. It's an information problem.
The Decision Costs You for Decades. You Get About a Week to Make It.
A solar array or a lighting retrofit isn't a purchase you repeat. You do it once, you live with it a long time, and the people advising you are the same people selling it to you.
That's not an accusation — it's how the industry is built. A contractor's job is to sell and install a good system. It isn't their job to tell you the project doesn't make sense, or that a different upgrade would pay back faster, or that the real problem is which rate class you're on.
Somebody has to do that job. We decided it should be someone who isn't holding a quote.
The Assessment. Free, and It Stays Free.
We start with twelve months of bills, your loads, your lighting, and your service infrastructure. Rate class, demand profile, transmission and distribution charges, riders, and what's actually sitting on each meter.
There's no cost and no obligation attached to it. We're not doing it as a favour — we're doing it because we can't advise you honestly without it, and because a share of the operations we assess turn into projects we manage.
Some don't. That's built into the model.
The Findings Report. Yours, Whatever You Do Next.
You get it in writing: where your money is going, which costs are actually movable, what it would take to move them, and what the payback looks like on each option.
If it says solar makes sense, it says why, at what size, and on what assumptions. If it says lighting should come first, it says that. If it says the fastest win is a rate reclassification that costs you nothing but a phone call, it says that too.
The report is yours. Take it to any contractor you like. Sit on it. Do nothing. There's no clause that says otherwise.
Project Management. Optional, and This Is the Part We Charge For.
If the findings support a project and you want us to run it, we do.
That means writing the specification from your audit data rather than from a vendor's proposal. Bringing in the right people for the work. Handling interconnection and utility paperwork. Managing grant and incentive applications. Verifying the install against the spec before final payment. And being the one who still knows what was installed and why when something needs attention three years later.
You can skip this entirely and hire the work yourself. Plenty do.
You See Both Numbers.
Our fee is a separate line from the vendor's price. Not folded into it, not marked up inside it. You see what the work costs and you see what we cost.
The fee is scoped to the project, because a lighting retrofit and a large ground-mount array aren't the same amount of work and shouldn't cost the same to manage. We quote it before you commit to anything, and it's set against the recommended scope in the findings report — not against whatever the final invoice happens to be.
On the vendor side: we bring our contractors repeat work on specifications that don't change halfway through, and that's worth something to them. The pricing we get reflects that. Whether it covers our fee on your particular project depends on the project — we'll show you both numbers and you can judge for yourself.
We Don't Sell Equipment. We Do Have Opinions About Who Installs It.
We hold no product lines, no dealer agreements, and no manufacturer relationships. Nobody pays us to be recommended, and we don't accept referral fees from any contractor.
What we have instead is a small group of installers, electricians, and engineers we've worked with long enough to vouch for — people who show up, who handle rural three-phase properly, and who you'll still be able to reach in five years. We put your project in front of them at rates we've already negotiated, rather than sending you out to collect quotes from whoever answers the phone.
Our fee comes from you. Which means our only job is getting your project right.
Start With the Numbers.
The assessment is free and there’s no obligation attached to it. Worst case, you find out you’re already running efficiently — and that’s worth knowing too.
Get a Free Energy Assessment