Faraday Feasibility Study
Know if a microgrid pencils out for your site in 30 days, for a fixed fee.
Site-specific engineering and finance analysis. Real interval data modeling. Real Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) and cash purchase model. Real incentive stacking. Real go/no-go decision. Fixed fee, fixed scope, fixed schedule. The entire fee applies to your project if you decide to go ahead.
Designed specifically for commercial and industrial facilities in California considering solar, energy storage, and microgrids.
What you get with the Faraday Feasibility Study.
The Faraday Feasibility Study provides the same seven sections every time in exactly the same format tailored specifically for your facility. You purchase the engineering report, not a marketing tool, that is ready to review by a CFO, board of directors, and lenders without any translation.
Energy Profile
Your facility’s one year of fifteen minute data evaluated using your utility rate structure. Your demand profile, load curve, time-of-use exposure, and past outages identified.
Right-sized system concept
A conceptual system design aligned with your unique operating profile – including solar generation capability, battery storage capability, islanding capability, and generation if applicable. Sized for your costs, not a generic solution.
Financial model: PPA or cash
Comparison between two structures. Cash flows each year, IRR, NPV, payback period, and cash flows monthly as compared to your utility bill.
Incentive stack
Investment in federal tax credit program and adders, depreciation using MACRS, and also all state programs that you can qualify for. List of each component along with program.
Resilience and critical-loads analysis
How many loads, how frequently, under what circumstances. The Level of Alignment may be Resilience, Endurance, or Independence, along with recommended reasoning.
Project timeline and budget range
Schedule of initial installation and cost, according to your facility. Tailored to your facility; not the advertised starting cost.
Go/no-go recommendation
The conclusion. If the answer is to continue, at what level and what type of financing should this be done? If the answer is not to continue, what needs to be changed in order to make another conclusion?
Eighteen pages, approximately. Board ready and bank ready. Keep it, use it, share it.
Thirty days from data authorization to delivery of report.
The Faraday Feasibility Study is a fixed-scope and fixed-fee project that has a set timeline. The thirty-day period begins after complete data authorization, usually twelve months of data collected using fifteen-minute intervals with bills through UtilityAPI.
Intake & data authorization
Signed engagement letter. Utility data authorization started using the normal channel through UtilityAPI; Utility Share-My-Data is the backup approach. Site walkthrough scheduled for either Week 1 or Week 2.
Site walkthrough & engineering inputs
On-site walkthrough that lasts from sixty to ninety minutes. Condition assessment of the roof, property, and electrical room.
Modeling & analysis
Interval data analyzed. System sizing done against load profile and resilience requirements. Financial model populated based on different purchase scenarios. Incentive stack measured.
QA, sign-off & delivery
Completion checklist done internally. Dual sign-off from Faraday COO & CFO, both needed before the report leaves the building. Final report provided in PDF form, with walk through call set up to ensure correct handing over of the report.
30 day target based on complete inputs by Day 7. Multi-meter sites, incomplete data or changes to scope can push out the timeline, but in case of delay the new deadline will be specified in writing by Week 2.
Fixed fee. Written quote. No change orders.
The cost of the Faraday Feasibility Study varies depending on the size of the engineering task you need for your facility. These factors include peak electrical demand, the number of electrical services and meters, and the number of buildings on site. A facility with a simple scope and one meter represents the published base fee. Multi-building facilities with multiple services and a staged resilience strategy represent more engineering time and a larger written quote fee. An exact written fixed fee is provided following a free thirty minute discussion to determine scope. The agreed upon fee will not be changed once the Study has started.
The fee you agree to upfront is the fee you pay. If the scope changes in the middle of the Study – perhaps you decided to add another building, or maybe your utility data requires a different approach – Faraday quotes that change in writing prior to commencing any work. No surprises.
Effectively free if you proceed. Defensible if you don’t.
If you proceed, the Study is effectively free
Signing a Faraday installation contract within twelve months of report delivery ensures that one hundred percent of the Study fee is credited against the first installment payment milestone. The twelve-month timeframe provides sufficient leeway for board review, financing considerations, and landlord consents. The terms are detailed in the engagement letter that initiates the Study, and there is no confusion when it comes to the install process.
If you don't proceed, you owe nothing further
Hiring us to do the Study binds you only to the Study fee. There is no letter of intent. No exclusivity. No commitment to installation. Once received, the report can be put to work with Faraday, shared with the board or lender, or used when site circumstances change. One caveat: the engagement letter prevents you from sharing the report with other microgrid vendors to extract pricing. It's a common provision in studies and has never been an issue.
Some prospects like to talk first. The thirty-minute discovery call is free, obligation-free, and the way we normally get you your exact fee quote.
What we need from you to get the Study started.
The thirty-day Study timeline begins when the inputs are authorized. The bulk of the engineering effort is done by Faraday. All your participation will happen in the first week, with four authorization and access inputs.
Twelve months of interval data from your utility
By far the most important input. The standard approach for Faraday is UtilityAPI authorization, which is once-off consent through our third party utility's data sharing portal to grant Faraday read-only access to your facility's fifteen-minute interval data and utility bills. Direct utility Share-My-Data registration using a Faraday prepared authorization document is the backup plan if your account isn’t covered by UtilityAPI. Manual bill submission isn’t allowed; interval data is needed to model demand-charge exposure properly.
Site walkthrough access
A sixty to ninety-minute site walkthrough in either Week 1 or Week 2. Faraday assesses roof and ground-mount space, electrical room, interconnection access, and critical load locations. Operations personnel normally come along; finance and facilities management participation is useful but not required.
Operational profile inputs
Short questionnaire – taking around fifteen minutes to fill out – covering operating hours, causes of peak load, potential for cost incurred due to downtime, changes in facilities, as well as presence of solar, batteries, or generators. Structured questionnaire; no need to provide narrative answers.
Financing-context inputs
Short discussion of financing-related issues such as appetite for taxes, ownership structure, and capital allocation timeframe. Used to define how the financial model will be filled for Power Purchase Agreement, Lease, and Cash approaches simultaneously.
Faraday manages the UtilityAPI authorization process for you; your task is to authorize the process through the UtilityAPI website. Other inputs are handled via shared folder or email.
“No-go” is a legitimate result.
There are circumstances which will lead to the conclusion that the site is a no-go case. Short duration of the remaining lease, extremely low demand charge, interconnection capacity limitation, insufficient amount of rooftop or ground mount area or mismatched operation hours and time of generation are the usual reasons for reaching such a result. If a no-go decision is made in the course of the Study, it will be clearly stated in the report and the factors which will help to make the decision different will be mentioned.
Many cases where the site was “no-go” become “go” cases within two to three years because of rising utility rates, renegotiated leases, change in ownership or upgrading the interconnection. The Study can be helpful for future assessments since the study is well-documented and assumptions are clearly stated, so the new assessment after twenty-four months will be just an update.
Faraday never manipulates results of the Study in order to sell its product. The value of the Study as a qualifying tool relies on the validity of the conclusions.
Frequently asked questions about the Feasibility Study.
A free proposal and paid feasibility study are two different deliverables, but trying to say otherwise has cost commercial buyers money. A free proposal is a sales document; its purpose is to secure the business, so its motivations lie in being optimistic about savings and making assumptions. On the other hand, a paid feasibility study is an engineering deliverable, which involves the application of analysis of the analyst hours, utility-interval data analysis, financial modeling, and a conclusion that can stand on its own regardless of whether there will ever be a contract signed with Faraday. The fee is what allows Faraday to put in the time and effort without expecting a sale out of it. In case there ever is a contract signed within 12 months of receiving the deliverable, then 100% of the fee goes back as a credit toward the first milestone payment of the installation process.
The feasibility study fee is charged up front at the time of the study. Should you sign an installation contract with Faraday within 12 months of receiving the report, the full feasibility study fee is credited against your initial milestone of the installation contract. If you decide to go ahead with a different installer, or you do not install at all, the fee is earned in its entirety by Faraday based on the engineering work already done. The 12-month period is more than sufficient to account for the normal processes of obtaining board approval, capital budgeting, and landlord consent.
I agree only to pay the study fee. The engagement letter requires Faraday to provide the report within about 30 days from receiving complete inputs and requires you to pay the flat fee. You do not agree to install. You do not sign a letter of intent. You do not provide exclusivity. This is an attempt to create a clean sale with your defensible analysis that can be used now or later.
Yes. After delivery, you will own the document. It is designed to be “board-ready” and “lender-ready” — the financial model is self-sustaining, the assumptions are listed out, and the incentive stack cites the programs it depends upon. Typical recipients include executive staff, boards of directors, lenders, real estate owners (in the case of leasing a facility), tax experts, and sustainability managers. The only limitation that is included within the scope of work in the engagement letter: the feasibility study may not be distributed to competing microgrid technology providers as bargaining power.
The cost varies depending on facility complexity. The main factors are maximum power consumption, number of power services and meters, number of buildings, and inclusion of the backup power option (which introduces additional critical-loads separation analysis). The one-meter facility with a simple scope of work is cheaper than the multi-building industrial park with three power services and a staged resilience project. The precise fixed fee is provided following a free-of-charge preliminary consultation call to define the scope. The agreed fixed fee remains unchanged for the entire duration of the study – no change orders, no overages.
Two ways to start: book the Study, or talk first.
The Study is a fixed-fee, fixed-timeline engineering deliverable; one hundred percent of the fee credits toward your installation if you proceed. The screening call is free, no-obligation, and the path to having an exact fee quoted for your site.