A Los Angeles food processor using 3.5 million kWh a year, and the solar engineer that had already built on a food plant
An industrial food-processing and cold-storage facility in Los Angeles with a heavy power bill, and a California solar engineering firm with multi-megawatt rooftops and LADWP interconnection behind it.
$3,700
Introduction fee, paid by the solar company
3.5M kWh
Electricity the facility uses in a year
$0
Cost to the building
The two sides
A Los Angeles food processor running high-pressure processing lines and industrial refrigeration, with freezer storage on site, using more than 3.5 million kWh a year. And a California solar engineering firm with rooftop systems of 1.9 MW and 2.6 MW behind it, plus multi-megawatt landfill and water-district work.
What happened
01
We started from the city’s public building-energy records, which show how much electricity large buildings use each year, and wrote to those buildings and to commercial solar companies in California in the same week.
02
The solar firm said it had capacity and showed what big meant to it: a 1.9 MW rooftop in Ontario and a 2.6 MW system in Sun Valley. It offered to advance the interconnection application fees and do the first feasibility layouts itself.
03
The facility confirmed it uses more than 3.5 million kWh a year and set three conditions: the installer had to protect the roof, handle LADWP interconnection, and have built for refrigeration-heavy sites. No generic installers.
04
We checked the firm against each condition on the public record. Its Ontario project used a mounting system designed to protect the roof and keep its warranty. Its Sun Valley project was coordinated with LADWP, and the utility’s own news confirms it. And the Ontario address turned out to be a food factory running industrial cooling, the same kind of building.
05
The solar firm paid the fee without a sales call. The introduction went out within 24 hours, carrying the facility’s load, its three conditions, and the projects that answer each one, so neither side had to start from zero.
Why it worked
The building told us exactly who it would accept. We did not argue with that. We proved the match from the installer’s own projects before anyone paid.