We return to the ongoing series of blogs excerpting my recently published book, Building a Brilliant Tomorrow, with an installment that starts the discussion about the third of Inovateus’ five PEACE core values: ambition. When I use this term, I’m not talking about some sort of blind desire for power or selfish careerist attitude but about having a collective vision and a plan to make it happen, a belief that we at Inovateus can achieve our admittedly ambitious goals and become a top-five leader in the U.S. solar industry. We’ve made excellent progress since the early days of the company, and this excerpt provides a few examples where our ambition has paid off. But it’s clear we need to keep our eyes on the prize now more than ever, as we strive for greatness and a brilliant tomorrow.
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When Inovateus Solar LLC was launched, we began to pitch solar energy to companies and utilities at the Fortune 500 level. We were a small team (five people), and we didn’t have a very strong portfolio at the time. All we had was a plan. Yet, at every meeting we had, we were able to command the attention of prospective customers. Even though we didn’t have a track record and hadn’t accomplished much of anything that we put in our business plan, our customers came to trust us and believe in us.
The reason I think they trusted and believed in us was that we were very ambitious in what we wanted to accomplish. That’s another of our core values: ambition. We started from nothing, and today we’re in the top 10 of solar developer companies, according to Solar Power World’s 2017 list, and that takes the kind of ambition we’ve shown. We have a goal of moving our company to the top five in the solar industry by the beginning of 2023, and if we’re going to achieve that, it’s going to take even more ambition.
But when you’re very focused on something in the way we were and continue to be, it definitely comes through to others. As I mentioned earlier, we started with our why (as Simon Sinek calls it): We knew we wanted to create an amazing tomorrow through energy independence. And we knew it would take ambition to get us there.
Starting from just a handful of people who had no real track record and who pitched to much larger corporations and utilities, we were able to create relationships we nurtured over time. We made contact with companies such as Procter & Gamble, American Electric Power Company, and Duke Realty, and we kept them informed about what we were doing. We checked in every six months or so, and we showed them that we were serious about solar.
Indiana Michigan Power was one of the companies we pitched in 2008, in our earlier years. When we pitched them on solar, it was definitely a one-sided meeting. We operated in their service territory, so they gave us the courtesy of their time, but they had no intention of installing solar.
A few years later, near the end of 2011, Indiana Michigan Power was facing a rate case, and we took up the offer from a local lobby group and we intervened in the Indiana Michigan Power rate case. During the rate case, we learned that in a few years down the road, Indiana Michigan Power would have to upgrade its Cook Nuclear Power Plant because the plant was nearing the end of its 30-year service life. That would cost the ratepayers another $1.4 billion. We took the stand that solar was becoming cheaper, the technology had improved, the efficiencies were better, and Indiana Michigan Power should spend its money to work with customers who wanted solar energy.
In spite of our efforts, we didn’t prevail in the rate case, and Indiana Michigan Power wasn’t required to implement a solar-energy project or a solar-installation program for its customers. However, during one of those meetings, I was able to sit next to Paul Chodak, president of Indiana Michigan Power. It’s probably an unlikely scenario that, during a rate case, you make friends with someone on what might be considered the opposing team, but I was able to create a relationship with the leader of that organization. I shared with Paul our goals, visions, and ambitions at Inovateus Solar. I told him that we were planning to be a top solar-energy company in the years to come. “Paul, we’d really like to work with you guys,” I told him. “We’d like to help you adapt to a changing world where renewable energy is becoming more prevalent. As your customers ask about solar energy, wouldn’t it be great if Indiana Michigan Power could provide them some answers and some expertise?”
Paul had seen our work with the solar-energy carport at General Electric’s industrial headquarters in Connecticut, and Indiana Michigan Power had a car charging station program for its customers. I was able to meet with Paul to discuss the solar car charging stations, and I was also able to report back to him about many of the projects we had finished. One of those I discussed with him was a five-megawatt rooftop system for IKEA in Perryville, Maryland, which we finished in 2013. (It’s still one of the largest rooftop solar systems in the country.)
For three years, I met with Paul to talk about Inovateus. In those meetings, Paul would ask me how things were going at Inovateus Solar, and he asked me about the types of projects we were doing and whether we were able to achieve some of the goals that we had originally set out to achieve. Essentially, I believe what he was asking was whether our ambitions were genuine. Were we able to achieve things that we had been ambitious about?
Finally, in 2014, Indiana Michigan Power announced that it was going to start a solar-energy pilot project for sixteen megawatts at five different locations within its service territory. We were invited to bid and won the first solar pilot project that Indiana Michigan Power had, a project of two and a half megawatts in Marion, Indiana, just south of Fort Wayne, Indiana. Now Indiana Michigan Power was looking to bring somewhere between eight hundred megawatts and one gigawatt of solar energy into its portfolio in the next twenty years.
So our ambition to have Inovateus be a top-five solar company might seem unrealistic to companies that are currently within the top five and are based on the West Coast or the East Coast. But if utilities in the Midwest bring on solar-energy programs like the ones being planned by Indiana Michigan Power, then we are well positioned to take our place at the top of the heap.
In the next blog excerpt from Building a Brilliant Tomorrow, I will conclude the discussion around the “A” in Inovateus’ PEACE core values: ambition.
By TJ Kanczuzewski, president and CEO, Inovateus Solar
