Start the company. Then get it in front of the buyers.

Most solar companies that fail are not bad at installing solar. They are bad at quoting it, filing it, insuring it and getting paid for it — and nobody teaches that, because it is not what a technical course is for.

The six sessions

1. Structure, licensing and insurance. What you can hold yourself and what has to sit with a licensed electrical contractor. General liability and what it excludes on a roof, errors and omissions on the design you signed, WSIB and the subcontractor trap that turns your crew into your employees at the worst possible moment.
2. Quoting against a load, not a roof. How to read a year of consumption data, why Ontario's net metering rules mean a bigger array is often a worse one, and how to build a quote that survives a customer comparing it against three others.
3. Interconnection and filing. The ESA Notification of Work, inspection sequencing, the net metering application and where the micro-generator route under 10 kW diverges from the embedded generator route with an impact study. This is where schedules actually slip.
4. Supply. Distributor accounts and how terms are really set, module and inverter selection as a commercial decision rather than a technical one, warranty exposure, lead times, and what happens to your margin when a container is late.
5. The money on the customer's side. The 30% refundable Clean Technology Investment Tax Credit — who can claim it, what it covers, the labour election that decides 30% versus 20%, and the “available for use” timing. Knowing this wins commercial work, because most of your competitors cannot explain it.
6. Getting the work and getting paid. Where solar leads actually come from in Canada, deposit and progress-payment structures, lien rights and holdback, the change-order discipline that protects a fixed-price job, and what a maintenance agreement is worth on renewal.

What it is not

It is not a franchise, a dealership or a territory. You are not buying leads, a brand, a supply agreement or a licence to use anyone's name, and nothing here is contingent on continuing to buy anything from us afterwards. It is six sessions of instruction and the materials that go with them.

Your coverage area is a commercial decision

Session two spends real time on something most new installers get wrong by accident: how far out to say yes. Drive time eats margin faster than material prices do, and a service area drawn by optimism rather than arithmetic is how a profitable job two hours away turns into a loss.

What comes out of it is a published coverage area — the regions you serve, what you will travel for, and what you will subcontract or decline. That one paragraph does three jobs at once: it makes your quotes believable, it is what a directory or a referral partner needs in order to send you work, and it is the first thing a procurement officer checks before they read anything else about you.

The work that is already funded

There is a category of solar work that almost no small installer bids for, and it is not because they are not good enough. It is because nobody ever showed them where it is posted.

Public bodies — municipalities, school boards, hospitals, housing providers, First Nations organisations, universities, transit agencies — buy solar through open tenders. So do large commercial landlords and institutional portfolios. The work is published, the budget already exists, and the evaluation criteria are written down in advance, which is a far kinder way to compete than underbidding a stranger on a residential roof.

What the programme covers here:

• Where it is actually posted. The federal, provincial and municipal tender portals, the broader-public-sector sites, and the aggregators worth a standing alert. Most of it is free to watch; the cost is knowing it exists.
• What makes you eligible before you bid. Prequalification, vendor-of-record rosters, insurance limits, bonding, health-and-safety certification, and the supplier registrations that have to be in place before a bid closes, not after. This is the step that eliminates most newcomers, and it is almost entirely paperwork done in advance.
• Reading an RFP like an evaluator. Mandatory versus rated criteria, where the points actually sit, and why the lowest price frequently does not win.
• Bidding as a small company. Joint submissions, naming subcontractors, and how a two-person shop puts a credible team on paper without pretending to be something it is not.
• Debriefs. You are entitled to ask why you lost. Almost nobody does, and it is the cheapest market research in the industry.

Regulatory reality check

Requirements differ by province and change. Electrical work on a grid-tied system is regulated, and in Ontario it belongs to a licensed Electrical Contractor with the Electrical Safety Authority notified. This programme teaches you how that system works and how to operate inside it. It does not confer any licence, and it is not legal, tax or insurance advice — get your own, from people who carry liability for it.

Common questions