The Cabinet Maker in Sunshine

Elias is a cabinet maker in Sunshine and he builds kitchens for people who do not cook. They want the marble from Italy and they want the gold faucets and they want the stove that has eight burners and a convection oven. Elias looks at the architectural plans and he knows they will only ever use the microwave and the toaster.

He tells them the marble will stain from the lemon juice but they want the marble anyway. It looks good in the magazine and it looks good when the neighbors come over for a drink. He builds the kitchen and he takes the money and he feels a small sadness in his hands because he knows the tools will never be used.

A company announces a new solar installation and the headline says the system is five megawatts. The numbers are round and they have many zeros and the journalist writes the story and the public reads the story. Everyone feels the world is changing for the better.

But the building is often empty on the weekends and the machines are off during the holidays. The power flows back to the street and the utility company pays a small price for it and the company loses the value of the sun. No one mentions the waste in the press release and no one asks how much of the energy the company actually keeps.

The Weight of the Sale

I spent twenty minutes yesterday trying to leave a conversation with a man who sold panels by the pallet. I stood near the door and I held my car keys and I nodded my head. He talked about the size of his last project and he talked about the thousands of modules he laid out in a field.

He did not talk about the load profile of the client and he did not talk about the cost of the steel. I looked at the clock and I looked at the door and he started talking about the tier-one rating of the glass. It was twenty minutes of my life and I will not get those minutes back and I realized he was only interested in the weight of the sale. He wanted the big number because the big number is easy to say.

In the boardroom the directors want to say they have the largest system in the state. The marketing team wants to put a large number on the website. They do not want to talk about self-consumption because self-consumption is a difficult word and it requires a graph. A graph shows the peaks and the valleys of the day and it shows the times when the sun is high but the factory is quiet.

If you install a system that is 40% larger than your peak daytime demand the economic value of those extra panels drops by 74% because the export rate is a fraction of the offset rate. That is a real number and it is a hard number and it does not look good on a banner.

The Trick with the Contracts

I have sat at the negotiation table for the union and I have seen the same trick with the contracts. The employer offers an eighteen percent raise over four years and the workers cheer and the papers say it is a win. But the employer takes away the shift loading and they change the definition of the weekend and the take-home pay stays the same.

The eighteen percent is the megawatt and the take-home pay is the self-consumption. People want the headline and they do not want to do the math.

We look at a roof and we see the potential for a high-performance system and we think about the return on investment. We look at the 15-minute interval data from the meter and we see when the lights go on and we see when the compressors start. We design the system to match the life of the building and we do not design it to match the ego of the press release.

A system that is 200 kilowatts and used at 90% capacity is better than a system that is 500 kilowatts and used at 30% capacity. The first one pays for itself and the second one is a donation to the power company.

Grey Light and Thin Purlins

In Melbourne the weather changes and the clouds come in from the bay. A system must work when the light is grey and the air is cold. We use SolarEdge inverters and we use SunPower panels because they work in the shade and they work when the heat is high.

The cheap panels look the same in the press release but they do not produce the same power in the tenth year. The engineering matters and the structural reality of the roof matters. You cannot put a heavy system on a thin purlin and you cannot expect a generic design to solve a specific problem.

The market is full of people who want to sell the marble kitchen. They see a large warehouse and they see a large opportunity for a large invoice. They do not ask if the warehouse is refrigerated or if it is just a shed for boxes. They do not ask if the company plans to buy electric trucks next year.

They just count the square meters and they write the quote. This is why commercial solar must be about the data and not the drama. It is about the Levelized Cost of Energy and that is a boring term but it is the only term that matters when the bill arrives.

The Toast Burner

I was at a site in Campbellfield and the owner showed me his new system. It was huge and it covered every inch of the corrugated iron. He was proud of the size and he told me the price and he waited for me to be impressed.

“I asked him what he did with the power on Sundays and he looked at me and he did not have an answer. He said the sun was free and he said the system was big.”

– Site Observation, Campbellfield

He was like the man with the eight-burner stove who only eats toast. He spent the capital and he took the risk but he did not get the reward.

The press release will always talk about the megawatts because the megawatt is a trophy. It is something you can hold up in a meeting and it is something you can show the shareholders. But the shareholders should ask about the yield and they should ask about the displacement of the grid.

They should ask if the engineering was done before the sale or if the sale was the only goal. When you focus on the useful energy you find the real profit. You find the system that lasts for twenty-five years and you find the system that lowers the operating cost of the business.

The Yacht That Never Sailed

I once knew a man who bought a boat that was too big for his dock. He had to pay for a slip at the marina and he had to pay for a crew to clean the hull. He never took the boat out because it was too much work to start the engines. He just sat on the deck and he drank his coffee and he told people he owned a fifty-foot yacht.

He was happy with the number but he was not a sailor. The commercial solar industry has many boat owners who never leave the dock. They have the panels and they have the size and they have the debt but they do not have the energy.

We should measure the success of a project by the silence of the meter. When the sun is out the meter should stop spinning. It should stay still and it should stay quiet and the business should run on the light from the sky.

If the meter is spinning backwards it means the engineering failed or the ego won. The grid is a hungry animal and it will take your power for three cents and it will sell it to your neighbor for thirty cents. There is no pride in that transaction.

The truth is that a 100kW system that is perfectly matched to a load is a masterpiece of engineering. It is a quiet machine that does its job every day.

I tried to leave that conversation for twenty minutes and I finally just walked away while the man was mid-sentence. I felt rude but I felt free. The sun was hitting the pavement and the air was hot and I thought about all the roofs in Melbourne that were covered in glass that no one was using.

It is a waste of silicon and it is a waste of time. We can do better than the press release and we can do better than the vanity of the big number. We can build things that work and we can build things that last. That is the only deal worth making and that is the only story worth telling.

The Bottom Line

The industry will change when the buyers start asking the right questions. They will ask about the degradation of the cells and they will ask about the integration with the existing switchboard. They will look past the megawatts and they will look at the bottom line.

It is not as exciting as a giant headline but it is more sustainable. A business survives on its margins and it does not survive on its trophies. Elias knows this and the union knows this and the engineers know this. It is time the press release learned it too.