Jim's New Solar Biz: Today's Energy Solutions

Frequent contributor Jim Gilbeau writes that he and Jeff Bertsch started a new solar business, which he describes as follows:

Once elected, President Obama asked America’s business capitalists/entrepreneurs to use their abilities, to think up new and creative ideas to get America back on track, so we could remain the leaders of the world economy.
So the questions was, how could we create jobs (for us and our fellow citizens), and help create new manufacturing companies (for U.S. exports).

For us it boiled down to this:

America’s dependence on foreign oil is the main reason we feel our country is in the position we are in today. Creating energy independence would create new jobs, create new manufacturing companies and allow us to create and use our own energy, from our own resources.

As entrepreneurs this led us to the idea and creation of a whole new infrastructure business model for the way to sell renewable solar energy in America, which led to the creation of our renewable solar company, “Today’s Energy Solutions.”  See TodaysEnergySolutions.US.

Our first step was to analyze the process of how all the leading renewable energy solar companies in America were currently selling their products and services. We found that every company out there was doing the same thing, which included the outsourcing and the selling of imported products from foreign countries. The whole process was complicated and made it very confusing for the sales representatives, potential solar customers, but most important, it wasn’t doing anything to help our country create new jobs for American citizens.

Through our combined efforts, using our past business skills and experience, we created a new approach:

We represent our customers to the complete renewable solar industry sector, without representing any one product, system or company. This enables, Today’s Energy Solutions to design custom solar systems that best suit our customer’s needs for their specific energy situation. And by not being a dealer for any one company that allows us to sell all companies products and eliminates there ever being a chance of a conflict of interest. Every day we research and study the current and new legislation (federal and state levels) laws that are being drafted by our congressional leaders. This allows Today’s Energy Solutions to keep our customers up to date with the most current and important energy developments. We also research daily the complete solar energy sector corporations for new products and future technologies that we can pass on to our customers keeping them current and up to date with the most technological and innovative products on the market.

So we truly put ourselves in our customer’s shoes. With our knowledge and suppliers, we are able to make the best decisions possible in the design and development for our customer’s renewable solar systems. We do not compromise in any way our principles to make any sale or obtain new customers. We have complete transparency with our customers in every aspect of our projects. Our customers see every expense, line item by line item.

As we researched the newest technology and current uses of solar energy as a whole we discovered an American company with a new product which was revolutionary and could be the source with which the country could become one of the leaders in solar panel manufacturing, also putting people back to work selling and installing this product across the country and worldwide.

We have built a core team (dream team) of like minded contractors and suppliers:

– TMW and Associates Inc., our general contractor, their subcontractors and suppliers. TMW is LEED certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). In 1993, the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) established LEED® as a rating system designed to encourage and measure the use of green building materials, practices, and strategies, also known as “sustainable” construction. TMWandAssociates.com

– Allied Building Products Inc. (Parent company is CRH plc, New York Stock Exchange) our main material and product supplier and their hundreds of suppliers. Alliedbuilding.com

– Solyndra Inc. (Announced their IPO in December of 09 (ticker symbol SOLY) is the main focus on most of our jobs for several reasons. They are the first and largest grantees of Pres Obama’s and Sec. of Energy, Chu’s energy stimulus money. Solyndra’s solar panels target large, commercial/industrial flat top roofs. Solyndra’s thin film technology is the most advanced in the world, allowing them to create the most technological solar panel. Solyndra.com

– Pearl Electric Inc., our main electric contractor, their subcontractors and suppliers. Pearl Electric Inc. is one of the leading commercial electrical contractors in Central California. PearlElectricInc.com
Currently our projects range from 450,000 kilowatts to 1.3 megawatts.
One of our goals is to use U.S. products that are also exported worldwide, while only using the best panels. Using the vast amount of unused commercial roofing space, we can accomplish all the goals President Obama and Energy Secretary Chu set for Solyndra giving them the Department of Energy loan we have mentioned.

For all these reasons we are proud and excited to have formed Today’s Energy Solutions, which will save our customers thousands of dollars in energy costs, create thousands of new jobs, reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil, and at the same time vastly reduce the CO2 carbon emissions that are creating global environmental problems.