Managing Director at New Energy and Building Services Solutions
Can you tell us about New Energy and Building Services Solutions?
Whilst New Energy only began trading in earnest in March 2023, our senior management team have a wealth of experience not only in the Solar PV industry but also in construction and M&E contracting. I believe that the depth of this knowledge and experience not only sets us apart from our competitors but offers our clients peace of mind that we have a proven track record of consistently delivering projects from domestic scale through to multi-million-pound commercial ventures.
Having become MCS accredited in March 2022, we have secured a number of major Solar PV contracts and are on course to have installed over 2MW of solar PV in our first year of trading. The pipeline of work for 2023 currently stands at over 5MW and we hope to continue to expand our operations throughout the UK with the aim of becoming one of the major installers of rooftop and ground mounted Solar PV in the UK.
What is your role?
I am managing director of New Energy and Building Services Solutions. As we have expanded over the past year this has meant I have had to spend most of my time back in our offices or out on-site visits with clients. However, I still find it almost therapeutic to get out on site with the team, helping out on installations. I believe this to be important both in giving the teams direct contact with myself as well as for myself in ensuring that the standards that we always expect are upheld on every contract.
What areas do you operate in?
As mentioned above, our senior management team have knowledge and experience across a wide range of industries. When establishing the company, we inevitably took into consideration our previous experience of the UK Solar PV industry and the extreme peaks and troughs caused by the amendments to FIT levels, or any other incentivised schemes that there were. We therefore decided that we would always be looking to explore other opportunities that we feel we could benefit from. However, the pace at which we have expanded into the UK Solar PV market and the future opportunities that we are working on has meant that, for now, this remains our primary focus.
Do you work across the UK?
We operate throughout the United Kingdom and have also recently had a couple of offers of work in Europe. Nothing firmed up on those as yet but I’m sure the teams wouldn’t be averse to that come the Winter!
What is your proudest business achievement?
I have a proven track record in taking Solar PV companies from start-up to delivering on a very respectable scale on both domestic and a commercial level and I am absolutely certain that New Energy is going to deliver on a larger scale than anything I have previously been involved in. However, I’d say that my proudest achievement in business is knowing that, like many others, I have also come through some periods of adversity where you can find yourself asking ‘why do I bother?’ In those darkest moments I have found that you learn a lot about yourself (and others) and I draw inspiration from a line in a Bob Dylan song which tells you to just ‘keep on keeping on’. Work hard and you will get there in the end.
How has the industry changed since you began your career?
The UK Solar PV industry from 2010 onwards was completely driven by the incentivised FIT and ROC’s schemes. These were financial incentives that end users would receive in return for the generation of Solar PV on their land or premises. However, the level of financial incentive was dropped periodically over the next seven to eight years ultimately to a level that meant that there was no longer a logical financial case for adding solar to your property. The other problem, throughout those years were the supply issues caused in the months leading up to a reduction in tariff and the overstaffing issues companies were left to face in the following months. It was very close to a boom-and-bust model and that made long term planning very difficult.
Presently, the Solar industry in the UK has been resurrected by the spike in electricity prices caused by the ‘energy crisis’. Hopefully, we are now seeing those prices for the vast majority beginning to come back down to an affordable level. However, I do believe that we now have a long-term sustainable model whereby the price of a Solar PV installation has found a level at which the client can see a very respectable return on investment without the need for any incentivised schemes.
What do you think are the opportunities going forward?
Our plans moving forward are quite simple. We want to become the biggest and best solar installer in the UK! We have already established client relationships that will secure contract work for many years to come and, in addition, we are looking to move into the utility scale market with ground mounted PV.
We are very much looking forward to continuing to grow our team and build for an exciting (and sustainable) future!