“Show, don’t tell” is a common phrase at Station A. This expression stems from the original pain point we were looking to solve: the lack of transparency in the renewable project industry.

🛣️ How did we get here?

When Station A first began, the traditional industry-wide approach to identifying viable solar projects was opaque. Without an easy way to evaluate addresses at scale, it was normal to simply tell people whether their building was a good fit for solar & storage. Essentially: trust us. At Station A, we proactively modeled the economics of solar on every building in the United States and made that data accessible to anyone, showing the granular reality. Instead: trust the data.

The initial iterations of the Station A product were subscriptions to these layers of data, which provided a benefit to developers but didn't connect the dots to prompt actual solar installations. However, in the short term, our data product built a huge network of providers with Station A accounts as well as credibility in the market.

🔗 Combining our data, networks, and processes to build a marketplace

In the longer term, we began to see this data product as a means to help buyers, including building owners, evaluate and prioritize their sites for projects. We saw the early signs of this transition in 2021 when we received inbound requests from big building owners to evaluate their building portfolios. We identified the low-hanging fruit, but these buyers also wanted simpler and faster processes to solicit proposals and qualify providers. Our goal was to merge these networks:

  1. First, help buyers evaluate their buildings using our layers of building, utility, and tariff data.

  2. Then, take those well-qualified projects to our network of providers for bids.

These buyer RFP requests came to us repeatedly for months, building our understanding of the customer need and the Station A solution. In August of 2022, we pivoted to become a marketplace platform that not only evaluates buildings but also solicits and compares proposals for projects. In doing so, we helped originate projects and aligned our value directly with the value of a project, scaling our product’s impact.

📊 Showing buyers a real-time glimpse into the clean energy market

Since then, we have built a software product and team that standardizes and streamlines the process of marketing projects, sourcing providers, and comparing bids. We don’t tell buyers who to work with on a specific project. We show them the data so they can make an informed decision (interestingly, the lowest price doesn’t consistently win projects).

Let me show you the data behind this approach:

  • We have marketed over 160 MW,
  • We have run 34 opportunities through our marketplace,
  • We have grown our provider network to over 700 organizations and 3,000 individual Station A accounts, even expanding into subcontractors, with detailed provider track record profiles for each, including safety, execution, and market-specific deployments,
  • Our projects span solar, storage, community solar, and EV charging,
  • We have received over 233 bids - on average 6 per project and many repeat participating providers,
  • We have shown an average bid spread (the difference between low and high bids for a project) of a staggering $1.1M, and
  • We have done repeat business with every enterprise customer we have, and count the largest real estate owners in the world as Station A customers.

This is not the same company we were three years ago. This is good! This ‘new’ direction is based on our experience, responsiveness, flexibility, and determination. Today, our small and mighty team of 13 aims to address the biggest obstacles to the rapid deployment of clean energy. We passionately believe that targeting these challenges is the best way to accelerate the transition to clean energy.