Exposure to sunlight is good for business
When you have a large number of customers with large roof areas consuming high volumes of electricity and paying steep prices for that electricity, you have a market that is primed for PV.
Consider this of California,
- There are over 1.5 million commercial customers, more than in any other U.S state.
- Small and medium businesses consume on average 64MWh (or 64 average U.S. homes) and large businesses consume 520MWh (or 520 homes) of electricity annually.
- These businesses have around 84,000 acres (or 84,000 football fields) of roof area available for PV, more than in any other U.S. state.
- They pay an average price of 16.15c/kWh for electricity, 50% higher than the U.S. average and the third-highest after Hawaii and New York.
All these factors make California an attractive market for Commercial PV. Not surprisingly, the state accounted for nearly 40% of all Non-Residential PV installed capacity in the U.S in 2011.
But unlike the Residential and Utility PV markets that deal with a largely homogenous set of site factors and project variables, the needs of Commercial PV customers are more discrete. A space-constrained urban office building may use a solar carport system while a suburban warehouse may need a rooftop system. A hotel may see electricity demand peak at night while a school’s demand may peak in the afternoon. A vineyard may have a substantial electricity spend as percentage of operations, while a bank may spend lesser.
The discrete needs of Commercial PV customers will need targeted marketing and specialization. To get started, I disaggregated California’s stock of Commercial PV projects into key market segments and sub-segments. As it turns out, all kinds of businesses from Dentists to Department Stores are going solar.
Download the full analysis here