Reviews by Tracy Klockner

Innovative Energy

When we first came up with the thought of adding a PV system to our new building, we started making calls to local companies to get more information in order to determine if it was even doable. We were referred to Innovative Energy by our general contractor. Right from the start, what set them apart from the other companies in the industry was that they were completely honest, even when there was a chance that it would stop the project in its tracks. First, we had to determine what size array we needed/wanted. Our goal was to offset as much of our electricity usage as possible. Since our building was brand new and much of its contents were also new, we had no idea how much that would be. Eric Westerhoff and the other folks at Innovative worked with our electrical engineer and architect to estimate our power needs. Then, we had to determine whether an array of that size would fit on our roof. Luckily, since the build-out was brand new, we were able to arrange our HVAC rooftop units, skylights, and other venting so that we had large amounts of uninterrupted space for solar panels.

Finally, we were ready to go to IREA, our local energy cooperative. They had never approved a commercial array larger than 25kWh so it was quite a process to work through the details with them. Innovative Energy was our partner in this every step of the way providing the technical information the coop required in order to move our application through the Fast Tracks process. Our project was the pioneer, the first to go through this process in IREA territory and thank goodness we had Innovative with us on the journey because a lesser company may simply have given up thinking it just wasn’t going to be possible.

From the beginning, Innovative did not tell us that they could absolutely get the job done on our timeline whereas other vendors did, assuming it was what we wanted to hear. With a large construction project, it seems the norm that contractors over promise and then under-deliver. We had the opposite experience with our team, especially Innovative Energy. They laid out the benefits and the obstacles of the project and promised to do everything possible to meet our timeline. And they did, despite very cold temperatures and snow as we neared our deadline. I did not envy them on the roof in the bitter cold.

Obviously, the biggest benefit for us of our solar array is long term energy savings. We enjoy seeing our production monitor generating more energy during daylight hours than our building needs on a sunny day. Our solar system combined with other energy saving components including LED lights and window shades mean that our electricity bill has held steady at a nearly unoccupied rate despite hot summer days that required our air conditioning to be running steadily to maintain the environmental conditions our business requires.... read more

Type: Other

Reviewed: 09/16/2014