Not long ago, I had the opportunity to observe a concrete end-to-end example of project management with external stakeholders and lots of moving parts. The project in question involved field workers, multiple government agencies, a competitive sales pitch, public subsidies, and non-cooperating weather. If you’re wondering what this is all about, I’m talking about our rooftop solar panel installation. Let me tell you how it went, what we liked, and what could have been smoother.
Our thinking process
When we moved from our relatively modern condo in San Francisco to our current home, a Victorian house across the bay in Berkeley, our first surprise was the power bill. We were probably paying ten times more for our power and heating than we were before. Luckily, when we moved in, we got an energy efficiency report from the City of Berkeley which included some specific recommendations to condition our home for lower energy consumption. The low-hanging fruit was to simply seal any obvious drafts around doors and windows. Easy enough.
Then we moved on to the next level stuff: Installing proper insulation in our attic. This is a fairly trivial job that can be done without experience, but you can get help if you don’t feel comfortable handling insulation batts, or if your house has a difficult-to-access attic (or crawlspace). After completing this (and entirely removing our cracked chimney, but that story is for another day), we were happy to see that our energy bill had gone down by nearly 50%. Not bad for a few days of dealing with sweat and dust.
At that point, we realized that if we wanted to further shrink our bill, we’d have to consider a heftier investment. We needed solar, so we started to look at our options.
Considering multiple vendors is critical
Once we decided that we were interested in installing solar panels on our roof, we did what almost anyone would do: We googled it. And there are tons of options, local installers, major companies, and some adventurous folks who swear that DIY is the way to go. Having little knowledge of what’s involved, we made an appointment with a famous company you probably heard of, and let’s just say that we were sticker-shocked. Since lowering our overall expenses was the driving goal behind this project, it didn’t make sense to commit to a huge investment that would take forever to pay back. So we got discouraged and stopped looking for a while.
That was until, during a casual conversation with a friend, we learned about the Bay Area SunShares, a cohort-based program that once a year vets a set of local solar panel installers with deep discounts. In exchange for these discounts, the chosen companies get a number of customers to fill up their low-demand season. It’s a win-win for everyone, as long as you’re flexible on the timing of your project, because you have to assume that full-price customers will take priority for these installation companies. And that’s a well known lesson in project management: Often you can trade money for flexibility. If you can wait a bit, you can get a better price, and as a provider, if you can be flexible with your scheduling, you can probably accommodate that extra customer to balance your sheets.
Once we contacted SunShares, we were paired with three providers who came to visit our home, explain their services, and make a competitive bid. In addition to price, the decision comes down to relatively secondary factors, such as the brand and origin of your chosen panels, the scheduling flexibility as explained above, support assurances, and the overall reputation of the provider.
In our case, we discarded one of the three vendors based on price, and the other because they were aggressively badmouthing the other two, instead of focusing on why theirs was supposed to be a better offer. To this day, we think we made the right decision with our installer. That’s a lesson to be learned too: As a service provider, try to explain why you’re superior, not so much why the others are inferior. The customer should be able to draw that conclusion on their own if you are clear and honest.
Dealing with public agencies can be daunting
No matter what’s your political affiliation, I’ve yet to come across a person who enjoys dealing with public agencies, whether it’s your city’s planning department, or the IRS. Even when they’re doing their job efficiently, it can be intimidating to the outsider, and it really helps to have a helping hand to walk you through the process. There’s a reason why the tax reporting industry is so large in this country.
In our case, we had to work with two main entities. First, the City of Berkeley’s planning department is in charge of issuing the necessary work permits to approve any substantial modification to a home. In our case, even though the project was pretty straightforward, we were asked to reinforce our roof in order to withstand the added weight. I guess that’s one of the drawbacks to own a home built when William Howard Taft was president. After a small heart attack when we saw the first notice, we managed to complete that retrofit at low cost by engaging our usual handyman. That’s another lesson: Have a friendly expert on your side to jump in at a moment’s notice.
Second, in order to claim the federal tax credit that made the project financially sensible, we had to prepare and submit some paperwork to the IRS, along our tax filing. In this step as well, our contact person Jason was really helpful, advising us of deadlines, providing pre-filled documents ready to turn in, and checking in with us at key times in order to make sure that nothing fell through the cracks. That’s one more lesson here: Be helpful to your clients, and they’ll speak wonders of you. Especially if your business benefits from the word-of-mouth.
Update: We are famous!
A couple of weeks ago, I received a cold call from a local organization that promotes clean energy solutions. I was suspicious because I get so many spammy calls, but they were asking if we would want to host Secretary of Energy Granholm at our home. After double-checking that it wasn’t a scam, we were on board. In the event, attended by a who’s who list of local, state and federal elected officials, they introduced a new program to streamline the approval of permits for new rooftop solar installations. It was a fun, eventful day, and a nice anecdote to one day tell our kids.
Conclusion
Seeing the electricity portion of our energy bill essentially vanish has been extremely rewarding. And in the process we picked up a few bits of project management wisdom that can be reused in other parts of our business and personal lives. The fact that we’re producing green energy is icing on the cake!