In 2022, rooftop sales platform provider Palmetto introduced an enterprise sales product called the Clean Energy Software Platform. The platform enables corporate partners like consumer brands, utilities, and enterprises operating in other spaces to enter the clean energy market by offering their customers rooftop solar.
The enterprise sales software division partners with organizations that already serve residential customers, like real estate development and mortgage companies, consumer lenders, home improvement retailers, electric utilities, and financial services platforms, connecting them with tools to sell solar.
“In the same way Shopify provides everything you need to start a business – procurement, inventory management, marketing, payments, shipping/logistics – Palmetto is extending its offering to enterprises, enabling businesses and retail platforms alike to sell clean energy products and solutions,” said Christopher Kemper, chief executive officer of Palmetto.
The enterprise business unit helps partners and clients with net-zero decarbonization targets, aims at increasing customer lifetime value and prepares them to enter the clean energy markets. Palmetto offers one end-to-end digital solution for consumers from education, solar potential estimates, design, engineering, and financing the rooftop system. It also helps with procuring the panels and other supplies, identifying and contracting qualified installers, facilitating permitting and inspection, and providing service and maintenance for the lifetime of the product.
“Residential clean energy can be a tough business to break into, and we believe today’s U.S. rooftop solar adoption – only about 3% of U.S. homes – is largely indicative of the disjointed and difficult customer experience,” said Kemper. “We are enabling sellers to do what they do best – lead generation and selling products – while Palmetto handles the rest.”
Since rolling out the new enterprise division, Palmetto reported improved process times and customer satisfaction ratings. Notably, Palmetto said the speed to installation was streamlined with automation, improved workflows and better turnaround times. This resulted in systems getting installed 37 days faster than previous averages, said Palmetto.
Palmetto also reported a 37% increase in customers reporting they were likely to refer the product to friends or family, and a 5% decline in change orders and cancellations due to operational inefficiencies. Year-over-year, Palmetto’s total installations grew 75%, and its system activations increased 82% year-over-year.
Image: Palmetto
“Utilities and energy providers across the country are amidst a much-needed modernization, including the ability to track, measure, and use data to make smarter decisions on behalf of themselves and their customers,” said Eduardo Berlin, vice president of energy intelligence, Palmetto.
Last year, Palmetto announced its mapping software, Mapdwell, charted the solar potential of 107 million buildings – roughly 75% of all U.S. rooftops. It used the software to launch its instant proposal service in 2021.
“Mapdwell now covers 81% of the U.S. population in 38 states and Washington D.C., including all current Palmetto service areas,” said Berlin. “Our goal is to map the solar potential and derive energy load profiles of every building across the U.S. — and we’re on track to accomplish just that in the very near future.”
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Offering set up help to both utility scale solar development (inexpensive money to bigger money), and help to potential rooftop buyers (smaller expensive money to small money), while limiting or removing rooftop’s strong (business and physical) efficiencies, successfully maintains expensive hostage-type dependency of rooftoppers upon the utility. It seems to me, all this is kept inside a contrived box, to prevent the better-fitting model from being chosen. And the facilitator makes money, no matter who is chosen, just less money and less easily, if Microgrid and “distributed source” can be fitted in anywhere.