savings

When David Jimenez works with clients interested in financing commercial solar projects, he seeks a win-win-win scenario, says the vice president of sales for Greenday Finance.

Reaping benefits with or without storage

That means ensuring solar systems are designed, first and foremost, to save commercial property owners money on their electric bills. This will reap benefits for the customer, the installer and solar finance provider Greenday Finance. 

That also means adding energy storage to solar systems only when it makes sense. Some states are implementing changes to net energy metering (NEM)–a solar compensation method–and incentivizing adding energy storage. But it’s important to take a hard look at the numbers before investing in batteries, said Jimenez.

Focusing first on saving customers money

“We make a difference in having a different point of view: not as many panels as possible, but what are the best ways to save the customer money,” he said.

Jimenez sometimes is invited into a solar project after the initial design phase, and works with Greenday’s consulting engineers to ensure the project is properly sized. It’s important to do this before exploring solar power purchase agreements (PPA).

Too often, projects are oversized, he said. The goal may be to generate as much solar as possible, but designers may not look hard enough at whether this strategy is cost-effective.

Taking a hard look at energy storage

Another potential pitfall: Designers may suggest adding energy storage even though the cost of storage undermines the economic benefits of a project.

For example, a commercial property owner may use electricity mostly at night.  This may create an incentive to install energy storage to deploy solar stored during the day when the sun sets.  But that may not be the least expensive option; it involves purchasing expensive batteries.

Instead, it makes more sense to first crunch the numbers to compare different scenarios: solar systems with storage, without storage and with different numbers of panels, he said.

In this case, even if using solar only during the day means the customer will be hit with utility demand charges at night, it still may make the most economic sense to install a small system rather than oversizing the solar and adding storage. When adding storage, designers often oversize solar to ensure there’s enough available to run storage through the night.

The importance of understanding solar compensation tariffs

Greenday Finance also helps its solar finance customers better understand how to respond to changes in NEM, especially in California, where the latest version of NEM no longer compensates solar owners with 1 KWh of electricity for each KWh of solar exported to the grid.

Instead, the utility might pay the customer 4 cents/kWh for solar exported to the grid, then charge the customer 17 cents/KWh for electricity the customer purchases, said Jimenez.

“It’s important to understand how NEM rules will be applied and use engineering to think of how to get the best benefit,” he said.

When sizing a PV system, it’s also a good idea to look into local zoning regulations and potential development nearby, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.  Zoning and permitting requirements can have a negative impact on PV system performance. And new development can shade a roof, impacting the system output.

Gaining solar project financing quickly

Once the solar system design has been re-configured or completed, Greenday Finance can provide financing to qualifying projects in 30 days or less, said Jimenez. Greenday Finance offers solar PPAs that require no up-front investment and that lock in rates that are lower than the local utility’s rates. Customers can start cutting energy bills right away.

“Once the customer agrees, we can move fast and get the system up and running, saving the customer money,” Jimenez said.