More from ReVision Energy

So it’s been a WHILE, hasn’t it? Well with the end of semester madness and the slow season upon the renewable installation world it was inevitable that I wouldn’t be getting many hours in at ReVision. So with the tiny amount of spare time I have I’ll update you on the key things I was doing up until the middle of December before we left for break.
That laundry list of tasks that I mentioned before… pretty much all set! The site visit books came together fairly fast once the images were chosen and I had the joy of figuring out how to create the books in Word (~groan~). It’s not that the process was very difficult, it was just so tedious. Every page had to be made individually (as a former student of graphic design I would have rather pulled my eyelashes out… it was just monotonous) and you would say ‘but Heidi, just copy and paste!’ Oh no my friends, every image, text box, and logo needed tweaking. And just when I would complete an entire ‘book’ (ex: Commercial installations) then there was the critiquing and editing process. Now I’m not timid, I’ve been torn up one side and down the other and not flinched, it’s not personal, I get it. But from my previous statement of masochism you can imagine how awesome it was for me to say… change an image, readjust all the type, and then change it back. FUN!
Anyway, it wasn’t all tedious. Those large properties that I tagged and cataloged in Google Earth were for Epstein Properties (the one that was a secret). Well needless to say it’s no longer a secret that we are slapping panels on the womans roofs as fast as we can get our hands on them. FYI, Epstein Properties owns a large chunk of Bangor (like the mall and most of Stillwater Ave.) as well as some areas in Brewer and Old Town. So by next fall we’ll have a large chunk of the Bangor area covered in PV. Yay!!!
What else… I’ve started to answer the phones. There have been a few occasions when I was one of two people working in the office and had to flounder though odd questions from potential customers as well as ones that have been around for a while. All in all it went pretty smoothly (‘Can I take your information and have them call you when they have a minute? :P ). I also printed and compiled those site visit books. Now the guys have updated information and projects to display when they visit potential customers. Complete with product warrantees and updated schematics.
The power points are coming together as well, those are more of a group project though and before the holidays there wasn’t much time to work on them so I have a feeling when I head up there this week that’s what we’ll be focusing on.
This is also the last week that proposals for Efficiency Maine’s commercial project grant can be submitted. The grant basically can be used to pay for half (it’s a matching program) of any renewable or energy conservation job, up to $50,000. The state has a total of 2 million dollars from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to administer for this program. So depending on how the grant writing process is going I may get my first chance at working on getting some grant funds for our customers.
And last but not least, a project that I have taken on as my own, and will be working on as well, involves an idea that Doug Fox had to install solar hot water on the roof of the Unity Laundry Mat and Car Wash. I had the chance to meet Bob (the owner) at the student conference and speak with him briefly about the grant opportunity. He was interested in getting a quote and site visit from ReVision so I will also be setting up those details in the coming weeks as well.
I’ll let you know how it goes in the next installment!