❓Challenge
Solstice needed a way to get accurate consumer utility data quickly for enrollment, at scale.
✅ Solution
With Bayou Energy’s instant utility data API, Solstice provides a frictionless sign-up experience for any American to access clean energy that’s 82% faster than alternatives.
Clean energy for every community
Solstice is bringing affordable, clean energy to every household in America – today connecting more than 12,000 customers across the country to community solar, a more accessible way to go solar than installing panels on your own home.
While rooftop solar can generate massive long-term energy savings, most Americans can’t access it because they can’t afford the high upfront cost (often greater than $20,000), don’t have the FICO scores to finance the purchase, own shady or otherwise improper roofs for panels, or are renters so they don’t own a rooftop for solar. Community solar, on the other hand, allows households to reserve a share of clean energy at a nearby solar farm. There is no upfront cost to join, no installation on customers’ property, no need to own your home (renters can participate), and usually there are no FICO credit score requirements. Community solar, then, is a key piece of the puzzle for solving climate change because it provides Americans with a way to support clean energy and earn consistent savings on their utility bill through virtual access to a local solar farm without the barriers that have held most households back from going solar to date.
Utility data for community solar enrollment
When enrolling a new customer, Solstice looks at their utility bills to understand how much energy a customer has used historically and then sizes their solar subscription to match this energy usage. Before working with Bayou, Solstice worked with another provider to get customer utility bills during enrollment.
The experience for connecting customer utility accounts was poor, often requiring customers to wait a full minute to verify their utility credentials and then to wait again between 10 minutes to two weeks for Solstice to receive the utility bill data needed to complete a customer’s subscription. This was particularly problematic for any in-person enrollments conducted through direct sales channels, Solstice’s community engagement events, and online enrollments where usage was needed before the customer could complete enrollment. Due to these issues, In many markets Solstice had to fall back on asking the customer to upload a bill, resulting in frequent quality issues with the data provided that required Solstice to implement tedious manual quality control processes.
Solstice identified improving their customer enrollment experience and lowering the cost of customer acquisition as a key priority, especially as they prepared to dramatically scale their business after they were acquired by MyPower, the North American clean energy arm of Mitsui. Achieving this business outcome presented a key challenge – the lack of a solution in the market that could quickly provide high quality customer utility data and a great customer experience. Solving this internally would be a non-starter for Solstice, requiring them to increase their operational costs by building and maintaining their own in-house utility connections across utilities by hiring several full-time engineers, a dedicated product manager, and designer.
Built with Bayou
Solstice connected with a new startup called Bayou Energy who had built an instant utility data access API – one that authenticated customer utility accounts in 1 second, returned data in less than 60 seconds and offered a quick and easy process for their software engineering team to switch over from their existing service. Solstice jumped at the opportunity to become an early design partner for Bayou’s API and, after more than 6 months of full deployment, the results have been significant.
“Partnering with Bayou has allowed Solstice to dramatically expedite the enrollment process for our community solar subscribers while increasing our data integrity across 100% of our utility markets. Users enrolling with our Bayou integration completed their Solstice enrollment process 82% faster than with alternative methods. This time to contract completion is critical, as is the confidence we have that the data we’re using to enroll a user is accurate.
Bayou provides us confidence in our policy compliance as the data reported comes directly from their account, as opposed to self-reporting. In addition, Bayou’s continuously expanding utility coverage allows us to scale this transformational feature as we move quickly to capitalize on new market opportunities.
– Dan McNamara: Director of Engineering at Solstice”
Looking forward
In addition to scaling up their existing customer enrollment experience powered by Bayou, Solstice and Bayou are also exploring other ways to use Bayou’s platform to enhance their business. Continuous access to a customer’s utility data allows Solstice to ensure customer solar subscriptions always match 100% of their usage, maximizing their utility bill savings and fully offsetting their energy usage with clean energy. Continuous utility data access also allows Solstice to monitor a customer’s utility bills for community solar bill credits provided by the utility. This is key to providing a better billing experience that reduces customer churn and supports cost savings and time to cash.
Bayou is thrilled to partner with Solstice to power a truly great community solar experience that helps Solstice grow and furthers both companies’ collective mission to solve climate change through clean energy.