Commercial Solar Installation for Businesses

By electrical consumption, not by roof area. We start with twelve months of interval data from your utility to establish your kilowatt-hour usage, your load curve, and your demand peaks. The array is then sized to the portion of that load it makes economic sense to offset. In Massachusetts this matters financially, because new commercial Class II and Class III facilities are generally credited on the basis of 60 percent of net excess generation while facilities that are cap exempt serving on-site load are credited at 100 percent, so an oversized array that exports heavily is worth less per kilowatt-hour.

Physical construction is usually the shortest phase, typically weeks rather than months for a system under 500 kW. The schedule is driven by design, permitting, and utility interconnection review. For projects above roughly 1 MW, interconnection study requirements and any utility-required distribution upgrades become the critical path and can extend the timeline substantially, which is why we review hosting capacity for your circuit before contract rather than after.

Tier-1 modules and established inverter platforms, selected per project rather than by a single fixed catalog, because the right choice depends on roof geometry, shading, structural constraints, and monitoring requirements. Racking is chosen between ballasted and mechanically attached based on structural capacity and roof warranty considerations. We specify the equipment in the proposal, including model numbers and warranty terms, so you are comparing like with like across bids.

Whichever the site favors, and sometimes both. Rooftop is substantially cheaper per watt at small and mid scale. Massachusetts survey data showed ground mount costing about $1.08 per watt more than rooftop in the 25 to 250 kW AC band, with the relationship inverting above 1 MW. Ground mounts above 250 kW AC on land that is not previously developed also trigger the Massachusetts SMART land use Mitigation Fee and can face outright eligibility restrictions, so we screen the parcel before recommending it.

Load analysis, PV and electrical engineering, structural review, permitting, equipment procurement, construction with our own licensed crews, utility interconnection filing, incentive applications, commissioning through Permission to Operate, and production monitoring with ongoing operations and maintenance. What is excluded, and priced separately when required, is roof replacement, structural reinforcement beyond normal design, and utility-required distribution system modifications. We identify those in feasibility rather than in a change order.

Not as part of the base scope, but we assess remaining roof life during feasibility and will tell you plainly if re-roofing should come first. If the membrane has fewer than roughly 10 years of service life left, installing an array on top usually means paying to remove and reinstall it later, which erases several years of savings. We coordinate attachment methods with the membrane manufacturer in writing so the existing warranty survives the installation.

We bring the system to Permission to Operate with the utility, hand over as-built documentation, and monitor production against the model. Ongoing operations and maintenance covers inspection, cleaning where warranted, inverter and monitoring support, and response when production deviates from expectation. Because we designed and built the system, diagnosing a shortfall does not require assembling three different companies.