Rent, wages and insurance go up and you absorb it. Generation you own has a cost fixed at the moment you buy it. How much of your bill that actually displaces depends on when your site draws power — so that is where we start, not with the roof.
Everything else is a question of how much storage it takes to move generation to when you need it, and whether that shift is worth what it costs.
Warehouses, offices and retail
Large roofs above loads that run in daylight — lighting, air conditioning, refrigeration, forklift charging. The most straightforward commercial case there is, because generation and consumption already line up.
Manufacturing and processing
Solar with storage where demand charges dominate the bill. Shaving the peak is often worth more than the energy itself, which is why the load profile matters more than the roof area.
Agriculture
Irrigation, cold storage, dairy and sheds a long way down the line. Often the strongest case in the country, because the alternative is diesel or a network connection nobody wants to pay to upgrade.
Schools, councils and community buildings
Predictable daytime load, long asset horizons, and procurement that has to withstand scrutiny. All reasons the standing of the manufacturer matters as much as the price per watt.
Anyone who does is quoting an average of sites they have never seen. Your tariff, your demand charges, your shift pattern and your seasonal load decide it, and those are knowable — just not from here.
Costs you can forecast
Generation you own has a known cost for the life of the array. How much of your bill that covers depends entirely on your load profile, which is why we start with interval data rather than a roof measurement.
Peak demand, not just energy
For many sites the demand charge is the larger line. Storage sized against your peaks can be worth more than the same money spent on additional panels.
Reporting you can substantiate
On-site generation reduces purchased electricity, which is where Scope 2 emissions sit. We supply the metering data; your reporting framework decides what it is worth.
One counterparty for the asset life
Inverter, storage and monitoring from a publicly listed manufacturer with audited accounts and stock held in the country. Whoever signs the capex will be asked about this eventually.
Interval data first, site visit second, proposal third.
Twelve months of interval data tells us more in an afternoon than a week of meetings will. From that we can model what an array covers, where storage earns its keep, and what is left over that solar simply cannot reach.
Then someone looks at the roof, the structure and the switchboard, because that is where the labour cost lives. You get an itemised proposal with the assumptions written down, including the ones we are least sure about.
What to have ready
- Twelve months of interval data, or the nearest you can get from your retailer.
- Your current tariff, including demand charges and time-of-use windows.
- Roof or ground area, structure type, and the age of the main switchboard.
- Which loads must survive an outage, and for how long.
- Any electrification already planned — fleet charging, process heat, refrigeration.
Including, if that is the answer, that your site is a poor candidate. A proposal that talks you out of something is cheaper for both of us than one that does not.