Managing Solar + Energy Storage Projects in SolarNexus

Introduction

Storage now plays an important role in the US solar industry and creates additional business opportunities for solar contractors.   However, installing batteries requires specialized skills and the equipment often has long delivery times, which can result in challenges to your company's operations.  

Adding a New Energy Storage System for a Customer with an Existing Solar Project

If you have a customer with an existing PV system who wishes to add batteries, you should create a separate project for the same customer/site using these guidelines:

• Ensure your company is using service offerings correctly. About Service Offerings
• Verify that the two projects have the same customer, as described in the "Job Relationships" section of this help article. About Jobs: Projects and Work Orders

Managing New Projects that include both Solar + Energy Storage

SolarNexus recommends that new solar + ESS systems be treated as a single project in SolarNexus (as opposed to creating separate projects for solar and for energy storage) even if the battery lead times are much longer than the solar equipment lead times.

This approach allows the solar and battery systems to be analyzed together and reduces the number of projects your company must manage. Rules-based milestones can be used to track solar and battery installations separately, if needed. Here are a few things to consider:

• Ensure your company is using service offerings correctly.   About Service Offerings
• Verify that your proposal and contract templates accurately specify the scope of work.  The dynamic proposals created by SolarNexus can be used to propose any combination of PV, storage, energy efficiency and other services while only showing the relevant pages.
• Create rules-based milestones for any steps that are handled separately.  For example, if the solar and battery will be installed at different times, your account administrator can add separate "Install Solar" and  "Install ESS" milestones that only appear if the solution scope includes "Grid-Tie PV" or  "Energy Storage".   Rules-based milestones can be created for ordering, inspection, billing or any other tasks that may occur at different times. Administration - Job Process Milestones
• Modify Payment Schedules as needed to receive payment for work completed at different steps in the project.

Issues with Managing Solar + ESS Systems as Two Separate Projects

Creating two separate projects doubles the number of jobs to track and manage.  Furthermore, proper analysis of solar + ESS systems is only possible within a single project.

Although it may seem like a good idea to create two different projects, in reality, most contractors will not keep these two projects truly independent of one another.  For example, they may conduct a single technical site visit for both projects at the same time.   Contractors may even perform extra, unpaid electrical work to prepare for the battery while installing the solar.  Linking projects in this way results in the loss of project independence and invalidates the standard project processes, so that employees have uncertainty regarding:

• the tasks to perform
• the status of each project
• the location of project information
• the division of the scope of work between the two projects