What are the considerations for businesses looking to invest in a commercial solar power system?
Synopsis
For businesses looking to invest in solar, it's important to consider their energy use profile. Depending on the type of business, energy consumption can vary significantly. For example, a restaurant with refrigeration loads will have a fairly consistent energy profile throughout the day, whereas a manufacturing business will use power mainly during working hours. The first step when designing a solar system is to analyse the energy use profile and determine the best location for the panels.
Other important considerations when designing a solar system for a business are the direction of the panels and avoiding obstructions on the roof, such as air conditioning units and aerials. Ultimately, the investment in a high-quality solar system can provide a fixed revenue stream for up to 25 years, allowing business owners to forecast and budget their operational expenses more accurately.
Video Transcript
For business owners looking to invest in solar, it's really important that they consider their energy use profile. It can vary depending on your business type. So certainly homeowners are fairly predictable. We use power in the morning and the evening and not a lot during the day, but for businesses, there can be very different profiles. For example, restaurants that might have refrigeration loads, they're fairly flat and consistent across a day, but a manufacturing business tends to just use power during that sort of nine to five periods. So we look at that, that's the first thing we look at.
From there it's important to consider where the panels would go. So a factory roof is very easy, on some smaller restaurants it's a bit hard to find space because generally you're within a multiunit complex. We then also look at direction. So the orientation of the panels and making sure that we can avoid obstructions. What you commonly see on commercial roofs is air conditioning, HVACs, stink pipes, aerials, all these sort of obstructions. So when we design a system for businesses, we take all of these things into consideration, make sure that we avoid all those obstructions on the roof.
Ultimately though it's about payback for businesses. It's about looking at the outlay and how long it's going to take for that system to return them their original investment. And that's anywhere from three to five years. By putting a quality system in, we actually extend that much further. And we ensure that those returns that you're getting each year are locked in for a much longer period of time than if we were to put in a cheap system. No, we're not just looking at a payback period and then all of a sudden that revenue stream dries up. If we purchase a high quality system, then that revenue stream is going to be locked in for a 25 year period, which is great for a business owner. When they're looking at forecasting, when they're looking at budgeting, they can ensure that that cost item that sits there on their operational expenses is fixed. And they're not seeing prices rise each year by the same amount that if they would have not have solar.