A little more than a year ago, Standard Solar was purchased by Montreal-based energy giant Gaz Métro. For a lot of people—including some in our own organization—the question was this: What will the acquisition mean for Standard Solar’s longstanding goal of being the best solar company in the United States?

One year later, Gaz Métro is now Énergir, and Standard Solar is still going strong, stronger in fact than the day we were acquired.

The acquisition by Énergir has been everything we could possibly have hoped for and more. When we looked at the market a year ago, we could offer the same services as every other engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firm out there—better, of course, but you had to understand commercial solar to understand that.

We knew we could really differentiate ourselves if we could devise a way for us to add financing to our services portfolio—and low and behold, the $300 million pool of low-cost capital Énergir offered us has made such a difference.

Now, instead of waiting on other financing partners to approve our deals, we can do them internally. We can speed projects into existence and provide our clients with the security of knowing that someone who really understands their challenges will be there with them every step of the way.

That kind of financial stability has become ever-more important in the past year. Under the new tariff regime, money is even tighter than in the past for commercial projects as the costs of doing business continue to rise. While external banks are looking at commercial solar projects and passing because of what they see as undue risk, Standard Solar can see beyond the immediate challenges and see a completed project—while bringing its own financing expertise to play.

One of our proudest achievements in the past year was the completion (thanks to our financing) of a long-term project with the DC Department of General Services to install rooftop solar arrays on 50 municipal buildings in our nation’s capital. So monumental was the project, in fact, that it was instrumental in helping Washington D.C. become the world’s first LEED Platinum-certified city. We couldn’t have done that without access to financing capital, something we would not have had before the acquisition.

What can we possibly do for an encore? Well, Standard Solar is actively seeking projects around the country and are in the process of finalizing some major deals that we’ll be announcing over the coming months. The financing arm of our company is working overtime to finance some of the most interesting and innovative projects in the United States today, and we can’t wait to share them with you.

The past year has been one of explosive growth for Standard Solar since its acquisition by Énergir, and we’re only getting started. As we look to the rest of 2018 and beyond, we see nothing but sunny skies ahead.