Solar installation companies are finding that a holistic, whole-home approach to customers’ energy efficiency can improve sales closing rates, expand the scope of a project, and add substantially to the company’s bottom line, suggests Benji Watters, the COO of Earth Right Mid-Atlantic, in Lynchburg, VA.

Earth Right started out as an energy efficiency company five years ago, then added solar installation services to its portfolio of solutions for residential customers. Solar installation represents only 15% of all the company’s business activity, but because solar is the big-ticket item in an energy efficiency project, it represents the bulk of revenue out of all solution sales for his company, Watters reckons. Still, 40% of the company’s revenue comes from non-solar elements of a whole-house energy efficiency project, he clarified.

Pursuing whole-home energy efficiency services to expand an installation company’s revenue by 40% should gain the attention of most U.S. installers today, if that hasn’t already occurred.

“I think it was at a solar trade show about two years ago that everybody started saying ‘Hey, I think energy efficiency is going to be the next big thing that people [installers] are going to have to do with solar,’” Watters said during a March interview with SB. “They were absolutely right.”

“I think we’re going to see a shift in the industry to where a lot of solar companies are going to start seeing the need for that [a holistic energy efficiency approach] with a lot of solar reps really become energy auditors or energy solution reps,” Watters says.

Adding to (and showcasing) your tool kit

Earth Right offers a wide range of solutions to customers interested in whole-home energy efficiency, which typically cuts utility bills by 20%, Watters noted. Thermal foam, ground blankets, attic fans, battery storage, appliance monitors, and system analysis count among the solutions that might accompany solar, he said.

Earth Right also is cautiously expanding its set of offerings, either through internal buildout or through a larger strategic network of partners. “We don’t — and won’t — do windows, for example, but it’s great having a network with companies that do,” Watters explained.

Last year, Earth Right opened a full-scale energy efficiency show room, complete with side-by-side battery wall technology that agnostically includes offerings from Enphase, Generac, SolarEdge, Tesla and others. Educating a potential customer, with tools like the showroom, helps the client understand what energy efficiency can include, and simplifies the sale, Watters said.

“We’ve had all sorts of people come to the showroom — even inspectors,” said Watters. “Even our local community college brings classes into our showroom to talk about energy efficiency and solar,” he added. That sort of community relationship has also led to some internships for local college students at Earth Right, he said.

Energy efficiency audits

To begin continue the education process, Earth Right conducts an onsite energy efficiency audit for the client. “We will always do an energy efficiency assessment at no cost, and we will always provide recommendations. So if homeowners want to do more testing — for things like blower door tests and air sealing tests — we do those as a service with cost,” explained Watters.

“With that energy efficiency audit, very often customers can see very real, practical ways that they can help reduce their energy usage. And that just proves our [stated] intent of really trying to do what’s right for the homeowner,” Watters said. “Once people see that you really are trying to find the best solution for their home, they trust you. Because, you know, unfortunately, there’re a lot of bad [solar sales] actors out there that have kind of burned the industry.”

“Homeowners need to know what they’re getting into with solar and/or energy efficiency. They need to know how this is a benefit for them, and they need to feel comfortable,” Watters opined.

All Earth Right installers are NABCEP certified and the company also encourages employees to gain certification from the non-profit Building Performance Institute, Watters noted.

Enterprise software enables broader solutions

Gathering utility information and meter box configuration, inserting a full range of efficiency tools into a proposal, and offering customers varied costs based on a varying set of solutions can be a daunting task, Watters admitted. Furthermore, the time lag between customer contact and plan set delivery — especially if not produced in house quickly — can cool client enthusiasm.

Thus, the use of enterprise software to incorporate all these steps quickly and to crank out an offer in a matter of hours, if not minutes, is crucial, Watters suggested. Earth Right now taps Aurora Solar software to share a portable screen onsite with the customer to build out a customized system, based on the software’s pre-designed 3D modeling. Such modeling can also incorporate future homeowner adoptions for items like EVs and heat pumps.

“We’ve seen an improvement already where we can get plan sets in less than 15 minutes, as opposed to a couple of days,” noted Watters. “One of the things that Aurora is working on now is instant plan sets. We’ve been beta testing for them,” he added.

The Aurora software includes the use of algorithms, artificial intelligence and other features to permit the installation consultant to switch between customer modes of self-consumption, backup, or energy arbitrage modeling, demonstrating costs, returns and other benefits, according to the company website.

Over 7,000 solar industry companies users have employed Aurora on over 10 million solar projects, the company states. According to Aurora’s 2025 Solar Industry Snapshot, 10% of homeowners want to electrify their home before considering solar and 37% feel solar panels are more valuable when paired with whole-home electrification.

Broad proposal flexibility

“Being able to present all these versions of the design information in one proposal software is very helpful,” Watters said. “Before we adopted Aurora we were using different proposal software, depending on whether we were just doing an energy efficiency report or preparing a solar proposal.”

Earth Right did not adopt Aurora without confirming that the software could really provide all the tools it needed, Watters said. In earlier versions, the software did not include energy efficiency audit capability, he said. Then, Aurora began work on adding that, utilizing Earth Right as a development team resource.

“Honestly, I was shocked at how seriously they took it [adding the efficiency feature], and it was actually really exciting to see,” Watters admitted. “I remember when they first started developing it, they actually asked if I wanted to hop on some of the calls and give input. I was excited to see that they actually were listening to our prior suggestions.”

Financing Holistic Solutions

Part of the equation for executing an multi-pronged energy efficiency project is the ease of financing. An increasing number of federal, state, county and municipal jurisdictions are now willing to finance energy efficiency, either directly, through rebates or through tax credits.

“We are now seeing a lot of the big finance lenders starting to offer loans for energy efficiency, whereas primarily they were all just solar lenders,” observed Watters.

Tags: Aurora Solar, sales and marketing