Five Tips on Winning Support for Solar

You’re probably well aware by now that solar is spreading. Maybe you’ve installed a system at home, or you’re just noticing more and more solar on buildings, fields and parking lots on your drive to work. You know there are incentives for going solar, and you’ve heard costs have come down dramatically. You’re also fairly certain your organization could benefit from installing a solar electric system to meet some portion of your energy demand.

So, what’s the hold up? It’s likely the challenge of rallying support and getting approval for a big capital improvement project like solar.

The learning curve can feel like an entirely new job responsibility, and the uphill climb can tax what limited hours you have left and any political capital you’ve built from other successfully completed projects. The thought of getting a consensus and ultimate sign-off for a technology that doesn’t fit within the conventional, historical approach is the biggest hurdle we hear from our customers early on.

To help more solar advocates navigate their organization’s approval and vetting process, we’ve aggregated the five most popular tips we culled from the champions that were integral to their organization going solar here.  

1. Speak your stakeholders’ language

Solar may seem inconceivable but in reality--if positioned correctly-- it fits cleanly into the buckets senior managers typically think about. A Power Purchase Agreement may be a new concept to the head of finance, but a strategy for hedging against volatile and increasing fuel costs is Finance 101. Net Energy Metering can be confusing, but explaining it as a mechanism that allows you to sell a wholesale commodity at retail prices is straightforward. Solar panels may look like some futuristic technology, but a chief engineer will rapidly grasp key parameters such as production, up-time and performance guarantees just like s/he would for a co-generation heat engine or chiller.

Ask us to help frame a solar project in your organization’s language.

2. Tie project benefits to your core mission

No matter how attractive a project is, it can be difficult to get your organization excited about something unrelated to its mission and the function it serves everyday. Begin by considering how a solar project would enhance the execution of its core mission.

For example, a university energy manager asked Borrego Solar to provide a team from its business school with the data necessary to evaluate financing options for solar. With some guidance, the students were able to build a business case that included deliverables being used to make real decisions. In this case, the solar project was directly tied to the University’s mission to educate its students.

Another customer was able to provide greater reliability and power quality to its tenants--biotech firms with exacting requirements--by deploying solar adjacent to their offices, which was at the end of a feeder that had been plagued by reliability problems. By going solar, the firm was able the improve its tenants’ experience through a more reliable energy supply and consistent utility costs.

Contact us for more examples of how to connect solar benefits with your organization’s mission.

3. Address project risks head on

As with any substantial capital improvement project, there are a number of risks to deploying solar that experienced managers should be aware of up front. Rather than pitching the benefits and waiting for questions about risk to arise, outline the potential risks from the onset and include risk avoidance and mitigation in your communications along the way. You and your stakeholders may be pleasantly surprised to learn how low-risk of a proposition solar can be.

Ask us how to address concerns about risk.

4. Identify the risks of inaction

While it is easy to conjure up all of the risks that a solar project might entail, organizations often neglect to consider the risks of NOT securing their own long-term energy supply. A smart financial planner once told me there is no such thing as ‘sitting on the sidelines when the stock market is volatile’ and correctly identified how getting out of the market is an investment in U.S. dollars (which may or may not be a good thing). By the same token, NOT deploying solar, or other forms of distributed generation, means your organization is still making a bet,  only in this case it’s that buying from the utility, with little visibility into future prices, is the best option.

Contact us to discuss the outlook for solar vs. utility-supplied electricity.

5. Find (or be) a mobilizer

Almost every completed solar project has seen the light of day thanks to the champion within the organization who was passionate about the benefits solar brings to its operations, staff, and customers. With facts and data, they conveyed their passion to the necessary stakeholders and shepherded the projects to the end. At Houghton College, it was sustainability coordinator Brian Webb (watch a video of the project he sponsored here).

If you’re an executive with broad responsibilities, you may not have the time to personally become the informed advocate required to get your solar energy project built. In that case, identify someone on your team, or a related team, who’d not only be excited at the opportunity to make a difference, but also have the analytics and communications skills necessary to make it happen. If you are that person in your organization, contact us to learn how to mobilize a solar project.

Other materials you might find helpful:

• [Article] Integrating Renewable Generation with Your Strategy for Managing the Three Energy Cost Drivers
• [Article] The Crucial Fourth Piece of Energy Management
• [Guide] Solar RFP Best Practices Guide\
• [Guide] Understanding Zero Upfront Capital Solar Financing