Q&A: Ari Nikolopoulos details his rapid rise at Smart Commercial Solar

As Head of Service at Smart Commercial Solar, we rely on Aristides Nikolopoulos for his intricate knowledge of optimising commercial solar systems, as well as his personable approach to client relations.

Here’s how Ari went from bright-eyed intern to department head in just a few short years.

How did you find your way to Smart Commercial Solar?

I started here about four-and-a-half years ago as an intern. I was still studying at uni, working a couple of days a week, and I originally joined the analysis team. They were looking at feasibility studies when the price of solar was – while not expensive – high relative to what it is now.

But even back then, there was huge uptake. We were sending out a significant amount of quotes a week to commercial businesses, usually smaller businesses like pubs and clubs. They also had an extra incentive from the government to put solar on their roofs.

What were your responsibilities?

I started off looking at the systems’ payback times in the context of anticipated electricity prices. I'm sure we got a few of those forecasts wrong, but either way the systems paid themselves off.

Slowly, I started to look at how the systems were performing. I could see service as a great opportunity for us to add value to clients and create further revenue streams for the business. Back in those times there were a couple of guys in the team who, if something major went wrong, they would obviously fix it. But there was no one dedicated to actually analysing the systems and making sure they were performing well every day. So I started to do more and more of that, as an intern.

You had an impulse to take that on yourself?

Yes. I just kept looking at the systems and finding there were things wrong. I was like, “Is anyone fixing these?” And I was told to either follow up with a particular person or I could have a look at it myself. So I did that. At the time, we probably only had 300 or 400 systems. It was a lot to look at, but it was manageable. Now we've got thousands of systems all around the country.

Ultimately, anyone can install solar. But once it's on the roof it needs to work because that's how you actually get the savings. If it doesn't work, no savings. I wanted to make sure the panels were working optimally. The customers had paid for the servicing back when we installed them, so if they weren't working as optimally as they could, we needed to sort it out. More and more, parts of my day started moving into that.

From there, I was doing both feasibility studies and servicing, and then I decided to go to Vienna for six months on a student exchange. Luckily, a couple of guys from the Smart Commercial Solar team were already over in Europe.

Was that trip what sparked your idea that Smart Commercial Solar needed a Head of Service?

I was already thinking about it beforehand – before I left, there were discussions about making a whole service team. We had a structure where we had hired people to help as internal performance analysts, but it wasn't called the service department yet. The structure was there, it just wasn't formalised.

When I came back, Huon [Managing Director and CEO] and Max [General Manager] formalised my role as Head of Service. So that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.

Can you share a bit about your approach to customer management?

Since the service team’s inception, there's always been a priority to keep our customers happy. We guarantee the performance of our systems to customers, so it is important we ensure they are working optimally. That's our primary focus. It's about finding problems fast – before the customer even notices them.

To achieve that, we conduct performance monitoring and use analytics. We have an algorithm that tracks the solar system’s performance, and we use our weather forecasts to come to understand how a system should be performing on any given day. Every day, we're tracking the performance of all our systems, so if something is flagged then we look at how every inverter or every device is performing and then diagnose if there is a problem. Ninety-nine times out of 100, we’ll find the problem first.

Why aren’t competitors doing this?

Smart Commercial Solar is quite a professional outfit. The quality of work we deliver and every outcome from our systems is professional. Maybe the way we act and the way we communicate is a little bit more like a SWAT team than a bureaucracy, but our standards remain high.

In this industry, there are lots of companies that will install solar and not bother about the servicing and maintenance. One, because the businesses aren't set up for it. They don't have a dedicated service team, nor the analytics and the internal performance measures needed. Two, they don’t offer it because there's not enough money to be made.

Commercial solar is cutthroat in the sense that providers keep undercutting each other until they win the work. When they realise there's not enough money in the jobs and there's definitely no money in servicing them over time, they don’t bother. It's an industry problem.

We've lost many projects because of price. Customers will think, “Smart Commercial Solar is offering me a solar system. Company B is saying that they will offer the same. On paper, they are both the same solar system, so they should both work.” But it’s not just about putting the solar panels on a roof. It's about ensuring they work well over time.

When your provider isn’t monitoring the system, making sure it’s working at its best, then eventually those savings you were initially promised fail to eventuate and your payback times push out. The money you may have saved upfront will be dwindled away 10-fold due to poor performance. This is the difference Smart Commercial Solar provides.

Get the latest news and find out what’s happening in the commercial solar space at Smart Insights.