Published

2 years ago

April 18, 2024

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Crane-less Wind Turbine Repair Solutions with LiftWerx

In this episode, Glenn Aiken and Eelko May from LiftWerx share how their pioneering, crane-less wind turbine repair solutions are transforming the industry with cost-effective, eco-friendly, and efficient approaches to major component exchanges and offshore wind maintenance. Visit https://liftwerx.com/ for more!

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

Pardalote Consulting – https://www.pardaloteconsulting.com
Weather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.com
Intelstor – https://www.intelstor.com

Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. Today, we’re joined by Glenn Aiken, president and co founder at LiftWerx, and Elke May, managing director at LiftWerx. Based in Canada, LiftWerx is leading the way in developing craneless wind turbine repair systems.

As many of Turbine repairs have traditionally depended upon large cranes that are difficult to transport and are vulnerable to wind delays. And this is where LiftWork comes in because they are disrupting the status quo. They have pioneered ingenious smaller lifting solutions that are cost effective, efficient, and eco friendly.

Glenn and Eelko welcome to the program. Thanks, Al. Yeah, thanks very much, Al. So as we all know doing major component exchanges is a difficult task. And, or doing a rotor removing the rotor, those kinds of things usually involves massive cranes. And in the United States, and even in Europe times getting a hold of a crane big enough to do the job is one expensive and two, usually there’s a narrow window when you can actually get access to that crane.

This is where LiftWerx comes in and I really want to hear about, it’s really a couple of different things you’re working on. Obviously the gen hook and the rotor hook, but now you’re into offshore. So I think that’s a cool offering because there’s going to be a, not a lot of work offshore in the United States coming up in which is going to need help.

So I want to hear about what you guys are seeing out in the world and how LiftWerx fills that void.

Glen Aitken: If I look back 10 years. Because I’ve been working in wind energy for around 20 years we’ve seen a massive rapid growth in the size and weight of wind turbine components we’ve also seen just a huge volume of wind turbines installed over the last decade and quite frankly, crane requirements have also, You’re you know, increase just to meet the demand.

Both, both the, demands in height and weight, but also just the volume demand. Um, myself I came out of the heavy crane industry. I worked there since the early 90s. And, Really started to see customers were in a lot of pain over, over crane costs and also crane logistics.

And so we, we tried to come up with a solution that would solve a lot of that pain. And what we’re seeing now is that there’s a huge transition going on especially in North America at the moment where we’re seeing that probably 50 percent now of major component replacements are being done with uptower cranes as compared to traditional cranes.

Joel Saxum: It makes absolute sense, right? So you guys have developed this technology based on seeing the struggles of asset owners and other, ISPs and stuff in the world, because, hey, we’ve got to swap this one component out. We’ve got a crane, over here, it may cost you 50 or 75.

I’ve seen insurance cases where it’s a hundred thousand dollars to mobilize a crane, right? And that’s just to get it there. And once you get it there, then it’s day rate after day rate. And then if you get a little bit of wind and it’s stand down. And so those are things are painful, but it also affects, the business interruption and getting those assets back up in order, getting that energy onto the grid.

So it affects all of us. It’s not just a, a little bit of a money problem for one person. You guys have developed your own solutions in house. If you need to make adjustments, someone has a specific problem, there’s a new model out or something of that sort. You’re engineering it yourselves.

But the way you guys got to being a company like this is you Seeing the pain points of the wind industry and adjusting to it.

Glen Aitken: Yeah, that, that’s correct. For me personally, I before starting Lift works I I met a customer that was in a tremendous amount of pain having just exchanged a gearbox on a GE turbine.

Something that’s being done every day. But it walked me through the woes of this particular gearbox exchange where. It wasn’t just, winter time. He was on a wind farm where they had like close to 20 feet of snow accumulation over the course of the winter. So it’s not just the getting the crane mobilized.

It was also blowing about a quarter million dollars worth of snow. Just to get the crane in there. And it goes on and on. And at the time I was the R& D director at Mammoet, which is a, Dutch global heavy lift contractor. And he said to me, he says, Glenn, he says, can’t you figure out a way to exchange a gearbox without a big crane?

And that, that question really had a huge effect on me. Yeah. Why not? This customer clearly wanted that and needed that. And. Just thought about the scalability of that. If it can solve his problem, it could solve the problems of a lot of other people as well.

Joel Saxum: Your technology, you guys are using it onshore, offshore, and Eelko will touch on the offshore side of things as well.

But, you’re designed to solve problems. One of the ones that always comes to my mind, and this is the exact thing you talked about. I’m from the northern part of the United States, up in Wisconsin. I deal with road bans and freeze and all these different things, right? And or, you get into the western states, like in the BLM territory, where you have certain bird species that you can’t, or raptor seasons, you can’t go on, you can’t leave the pad.

I don’t need to leave the pad with the LiftWerx crane. I can roll up with just a couple pickups, or pickups, bigger trucks. But I don’t have a, to put crane mats out and all these different things. So you guys are solving a lot of problems here. In the onshore world, this is a curiosity for people listening as well.

When you show up with a crane, a big crane, you show up with sometimes 10, 12 truckloads of stuff and moving materials and mats and you have to sometimes mobilize other equipment just to build the equipment. When you guys show up onshore, what does that look like? Hey, LiftWerx is here. They’re rolling into site.

What kind of equipment do you show up with? How many trucks does it take?

Glen Aitken: It also varies. Small repairs require less equipment, larger repairs require more equipment. I think our smallest footprint is if we’re just doing something as simple as a generator exchange for generator changes, it’s one truck.

And it’s a truck 40 foot container on the back. And in that container, we’ve got all the tools all the interface equipment and all the crane equipment to exchange a generator. You don’t need any permits because it’s, nothing’s oversized, nothing’s overweight. So we can just mobilize and go.

And for customers, they can just call us up and if they want that service, it’s like ordering pizza. It really is that simple. We just have to get in. In a driver and hop in the truck and drive to that site. And what’s interesting, when it’s that minimalistic, we can drive from Massachusetts to California in four days and we can still do the job more cost effectively and more timely than local contractors can do in California.

Just because we’re coming with so little equipment and we’re so nimble for bigger repairs. If you’re doing something like pitch bearings where the rotor has to come down, we still need a small tailing crane. Cause you have to, you have to trip the rotor.

So you are coming with a small crane but that small crane is usually just a couple of trucks. We’re coming with a lot of other ground tooling, like hub stands, et cetera. So I think. At the very most, like all the crane equipment up tower and down tower, it might be about 10 trucks. But by comparison, if you’re doing it traditionally, you would be there with maybe 25 trucks.

Or more like what we’re seeing on really big turbines now, it could be 50 trucks. If you see some of these big roller cranes coming with all kinds of superlift, canoe weight and everything else, like it’s for big turbines that the repairs require big cranes.

Eelko May: And I think That’s a key pillar of our business that we show up with maybe a fifth or even a 10th of the equipment that you would need with traditional cranes.

And that’s true for both onshore and offshore where, you need to mobilize huge vessels, huge jackups, huge cranes to change a really small part. And yeah, but in, That’s just not right. If you can minimize that, then there’s always a good business case behind it.

Joel Saxum: Okay, Eelko, so let’s talk about that offshore game a little bit now.

We’re sitting in North America. Glenn, you’re in North America as well. So our offshore industry is very early game, right? I know I’ve just seen some videos from South Fork, and you look at it, and you’re like, Oh, fantastic, we’ve got some utility scale wind farms out there. But it’s just one right now, right?

They’re coming. Now, you guys over in the North Atlantic, Northern Europe, you’ve been doing offshore wind for a long time, so you guys have got quite a bit of experience over there. There’s a big, there’s a big problem with vessel availability. Across the globe for the wind industry, we know this, anything heavy lift is if you’re booked out.

So if you have a generator go down or you need pitch bearings, main bearings, something like that on an offshore turbine, you’re struggling right now. So the LiftWerx solution, you guys can work offshore. How do you mobilize offshore? What kind of vessel do you need?

Eelko May: Yeah. So we, there, we have a bit of a threefold strategy increasing in complexity.

On the more near shore. Wind farms that are fairly shallow water. We can use very small jacob’s, which are. Used in the civil industry to build jetties and key walls and these kinds of things. So they are operating in a different market and there are, upwards of 50 operating all over Europe. So it’s a different availability, different price level.

And they’re very simple, very basic units and no. And then basically we make a little table next to the turbine and we operate as if it’s onshore, right? So we make it a little stable area and we just do the same as onshore. So that’s the that’s the first step. Second step is that we’re developing solutions working from floating vessels.

So instead of using a jacket we do not touch the seabed anymore. No risk of cable damage, no interaction with the seabed whatsoever. So that will be a vessel coming alongside the bottom fixed turbine and working from there. That’s the development we’re doing at the moment. And then as a third there’s floating to floating.

So there are a number of floating wind farms out there in Europe here. They they can have issues. And our entire crane technology is also very suitable to solve. These issues in situ, so changing out major components, keeping the turbine where it’s at, where it’s more than where the electrical cables are connected and they don’t have to be towed back to shore.

So that’s those three things is those three things we’re working on and water fixed solutions. We’ll do the first projects this year.

Allen Hall: So you can avoid the high wind situation where they had a. Tug those yeah, tug all the floating turbines back to shore, which was super expensive and it just seemed like a major problem.

And so that you’re offering really innovative solutions. And I think if you’re watching from the outside like me and LiftWerx, you think all this stuff is modular and just bolt right on. But there’s a lot of engineering that goes on behind the scenes. So if you’re doing a GE 1. 5 versus a Sierra or a Cypress.

turbine. Each one of those requires some engineering, and this isn’t like the OEMs are designing their turbines to adapt your equipment. You’re actually doing all the engineering to adapt a crane onto their platform. You want to walk through that, Eiko, of what’s going on there?

Eelko May: Yeah, sure. So we on new types of turbines that we want to service, we We need to develop a system to open the roof, slide it back, gain access to the turbine.

Normally with a mobile crane or an offshore crane, you can just lift the roof off. That’s not the case in our situation. So we have to develop a roof sliding system and then our cranes are generic. So they can fit on any turbine, but they need to have, they need an interface to basically mount the crane onto the strong points in the nacelle.

And we also develop those systems in house. By use of, for instance 3D scans of the nacelles, we could go in and we could take critical measurements and we can develop a crane interface. And that typically goes up in small pieces, and we then build a small crane, and the small crane builds a slightly bigger one.

And that we like a Russian doll system, we can increase to any scale we want. And depending on what, whatever is in there in the first place, like a chain hoist or a small internal service crane, we can start with 250 or up to three tons of lifting capacity to start with, and then go to the ultimate lifting capacity that we would need, which can be 80 tons.

We’re operating now in North America for Rotoruk, the latest generation.

Joel Saxum: That was one of my big questions, to be honest with you. This thing is I don’t know how you get the actual crane up there, but it makes absolute sense now. Like we go up there with a small one, then we get a little bit bigger, a little bit bigger, a little bit bigger to what we need.

Cause when I’m like right next to your head, Eelko, and in the screen here for our people that are actually listening is a picture of the crane and I’m looking at that and going, that’s not coming up the inside of the tower, there’s no way, but then you can see a couple of different arms. It looks like there’s like a one, two, three, this one was smaller.

Probably got built first, then number two, and then number three. And you guys stepped it up as you went up. That’s pretty cool.

Eelko May: Yeah. One of the, one of our clients recently called it the porcupine setup. Hey, if it works, that was a new definition to be, but now it seems like a lot, but it’s very efficient because the steps get bigger and bigger as the capacity grows.

So for instance the road through Ukraine that we. put up, it goes up in a single lift. So you go from 30 ton lifting capacity in one lift, you go to 80. So that’s really quick and efficient.

Joel Saxum: Let’s talk about this then Glenn. I know you’re located here in North America. You’re up in Ontario just West of Toronto.

Eelko, you’re in the Hague. So you’re taking on all the offshore stuff in Europe and some onshore stuff in Europe. Where are you guys operating at right now? Where do you have kit? If someone needs a deploy, you can cover North America and Europe onshore and offshore? Or where else are you guys at?

Yeah,

Glen Aitken: that’s correct. And those are the two markets we’re working in at the moment. We do get a lot of inquiries from other parts of the world, but you can’t be everything to everybody. And maybe in time, we will expand to other continents and beyond. And certainly in our background, We all came from global companies.

We’re certainly not afraid of that, but you have to work in small steps when you’re growing a business. So yeah, today we have we have a presence in Europe and in Europe, we’ve only been operating for about two or three years, so it’s still quite new. In North America, we’ve been operating for eight years.

I think we’re in our ninth year now. So we have a much larger presence here. But yeah, because of the mobility and nimble nature of our equipment, we cover the whole continent. We have many teams working across North America at the moment, and we work everywhere from Central Alaska down to the southern tip of Texas and east to Nova Scotia.

You name it, we work everywhere. How many teams do you have right now? Presently

Allen Hall: in North America, we have six. And because it’s so efficient, they can really get in and out on MCEs, right? Now that’s the whole game is to be quick and efficient.

Glen Aitken: Yeah, that’s right. Just as an example, like one of our gearbox teams right now they were in California, they did a few jobs there back in January.

Then they’re up to Montana. Now they’re down in Texas. They’re heading further East. Actually, they’re heading to Yardnick of the Woodtown. They’re heading to Massachusetts shortly. Ah, I think I know where that is. Yeah. It’s a very different model than what people are used to using if they’re using traditional cranes because traditional cranes are so large that it doesn’t really make economic sense to be mobilizing them across the country.

So you normally, they have a hub and spoke model where they’re mobilizing it from a central depot and they’re demobilizing back to that depot. We don’t do that. We only mobilize one way and that’s to get there. And then, getting out of there that’s on the next job. So not only is it a way less mobilization cost to begin with, it’s only a one way mobilization because we don’t have this hub and smoke model.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, let me touch on something there that you mentioned because this is a value add for clients. I, in my past life, have been in a part of a lot of insurance cases, right? And I did, I’ve done them in North Dakota and South Dakota, Montana, Minnesota in the wintertime. And this is what happens in reality sometimes.

Okay. You have an issue where you need a crane, right? You may need a gearbox. You may need a blade swap. You need something like that. But it is now say October. And in October, you’re like, you’re just getting some snow. Then you get some weather. Nobody really wants to mobilize a big crane from the Southern part of the States in that time, because they may, it may sit on site for a month without being able to be used because of the weather.

So there’s scared of it. So they’re like, you know what? We’ll put it off. And then all of a sudden you end up with what you said earlier, a quarter million dollars or the snow where the snow moving, and then it freezes up and they can’t get the crane in there anyways.

And then we get to spring. So that turbine sits down from October, right? Not spinning a lick. And then you get to the point where you’re like, okay, it’s getting to spring. We’re tired of dealing with all these costs. Let’s get a crane out here. And then all of a sudden you run into road bands. The frost starts coming out of the ground.

You got another six week delay once you feel like the weather’s actually nice, but then you got six weeks of delay until the frost comes on the ground. So you can move anything heavy in there. So you end up having that turbine sit down from October to man, sometimes April, May. And then the issue is not so much the damage that’s done to the turbine.

It’s the business interruption costs because that thing down costs can cost if it was running 1500, depending on the megawatts, right? 000 a day in energy production. You can be crazy heights of costs for if it’s an insurance case or if it’s the asset owner, someone has to eat that money. But you guys, if someone said, Hey, it’s October, We’ll be there.

We’re in the United States. We’re there within four days.

Glen Aitken: Yeah. And what we see in our business, like there is no seasonality in our business. Our customers they see LiftWerx as a solution to. To plow through those those off seasons and, to take care of the remote sites and the tough mobilization sites.

And so we, we do all the toughest jobs. But we’re also seeing the trend that you just mentioned about, leaving things down for the winter and holding off until the spring. I think that, that trend is on the decrease. I think there there’s so much demand right now that it doesn’t make as much sense to do that because you may.

You may find that if you wait till the spring, not only have You know, taking a hit on production, but there aren’t enough cranes to go around. If everybody were to save up their work and do only summer work. So we’re seeing now, especially with the big owners, they are very active in the winter.

They are highly prioritizing uptower cranes in the winter, big for obvious reasons, higher wind speeds and more mobility, et cetera. Not dealing with snow and mud as much as you would with a traditional crane. Yeah we’re busy 12 months a year. We do not hire seasonally. We are. We are a full time employer

Joel Saxum: 12 months of the year.

So if you’re an MCE or someone that has worked in with cranes in the past, and you’re looking for a new job, LiftWerx, call them. This is something, it’s a hot topic because the last few weeks we’ve been talking about at OMS, at Blades, everybody’s talking to people. What can be done?

If you’re a company like LiftWerx, you’re not hiring seasonal. You have no shoulder season. We have never laid anybody off due to seasonality. That’s amazing.

Eelko May: You’re working with the latest and most innovative technology in the business to do these exchanges. It’s very safe and you’re learning new stuff and we’re continuously developing new services.

So everybody that’s part of our company is also part of these innovations.

Allen Hall: So Glenn, how do people find LiftWerx? How do they contact you or Eelko to get a connection and to get some work done this year?

Glen Aitken: In this day and age, most of the inquiries come in, uh, either on social media, on our LinkedIn page or people look us up, you can find our phone number, if you prefer to phone us, just look at our number listed on our website or people will often just reach out to us personally, just personal messages on LinkedIn, I’m present on LinkedIn so is Eelko.

So if if you want to reach out, if you have questions, you can, it’s very

Allen Hall: easy to find us. And we’ll put all the contact information in the show notes. So when you hear this, just look in the show notes so you can reach Glenn and Eelko directly. Guys, this has been fantastic. I’ve learned a tremendous amount here.

LiftWerx is really changing the game across the world in terms of MCE and making turbines more efficient and operating for longer periods of time. So congratulations to both of you and thank you for being on the program.

Glen Aitken: Yeah. Thanks very much for having us guys. Thanks a lot.

https://weatherguardwind.com/craneless-turbine-repair-solutions-liftwerx/

Renewable Energy

Maximise Government Rebates for Commercial Solar in 2026

Published

18 hours ago

January 23, 2026

Alice Rush

If you live in Australia, you might have heard the rumours that commercial solar rebates are being phased out.

Just got thinking if your business has missed its chance to cash in on government support?

Hold on! Let’s set the record straight: the government rebates and incentives are still active, and in 2026, they’re more strategic than ever.

Australia remains a global leader in rooftop solar, but the rules of the game have evolved. It’s no longer just about covering your roof with solar panels and exporting cheap power to the grid.

In 2026, the smart move is pairing commercial solar with battery storage, demand management, and tax planning to maximise savings and control when and how your business uses energy.

From small cafes and warehouses to large manufacturing facilities and corporate headquarters, businesses of all sizes can still unlock substantial rebates, tax incentives, and funding opportunities.

The main goal is to understand how the current program works and how to stack them correctly before the rebates end.

Therefore, this guide breaks down how to maximise government rebates for commercial solar in 2026 in Australia, so you can slash power bills, boost energy independence, and make every incentive dollar count.

Let’s dive in!

In this blog post:

Understand the Federal Government’s Core Incentive Options

At the national level, Australia’s federal government continues to support commercial solar through several key programs. The rebate program includes:

Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme (SRES)

This is one of the most popular commercial solar rebates across Australia. Under the SRES, eligible solar systems that are up to 100 kW generate Small-scale Technology Certificates.

These certificates are tradable and provide upfront discounts when you install solar. Your installer usually handles the paperwork, and the value is passed as a discount during installation.

Why does this matter for business owners?

STCs can directly reduce your upfront costs by tens of thousands, making solar a much more affordable long-term investment. This might sound exciting to many. But act sooner rather than later.

Why?

Because the value of STCs gradually decreases as we approach the RET (Renewable Energy Target) end date in 2030.

So, planning a 2026 installation can secure more certificates at higher values.

Large-scale Generation Certificates (LGCs)

For bigger commercial solar systems above 100 kW, it’s a different story. These systems fall under the Large-scale Renewable Energy Target and generate LGCs based on the electricity they produce each year.

These certificates are sold in the market, generating ongoing revenue, not just an upfront discount.

Why are LGCs a great option?

Provide cash flow over many years.
Can often outweigh STC savings for larger systems.

If your roof can support a system over 100 kW, you can easily scale up to access LGCs and create an annual income stream rather than just an upfront rebate.

New Federal Battery Rebate

From mid-2025, the federal government introduced battery rebates under the SRES framework, which continue into 2026.

In this battery home program, systems paired with solar can receive rebates for each usable kWh of storage installed up to 50 kWh.

This helps to:

Reduces battery cost by approximately 30%.
Enhances the value of your solar by allowing you to use more of the energy you generate rather than exporting it at a discount.

Pair solar with batteries wherever profitable. Solar alone saves you money, but paired with batteries, your business becomes more resilient and less exposed to low grid pricing.

How Can You Stack State & Territory Rebates and Grants?

Federal incentives are powerful, but stacking them with state-level rebates and grants can multiply savings.

Here’s what’s active or expected to continue in 2026:

New South Wales (NSW)

NSW supports commercial solar and batteries with:

STC rebates on solar.
Reset Peak Demand Reduction Scheme (PDRS) rebates for batteries. $1,600–$2,400 in addition to bonuses for VPP participation.

Here’s a pro tip! If you add a VPP-ready battery to existing or new solar installations, you can claim both state and federal rebates.

Victoria

Victoria continues its Solar for Business initiatives with:

Rebates for smaller commercial systems.
Interest-free loans and technical support.
Extra funding to encourage SME solar adoption.

You can pair your Victorian rebate with federal STCs and depreciation allowances for the best stack.

Queensland

Queensland has regional programs such as:

Energy audits for businesses.
Co-contribution grants.
Targeted agricultural support to reduce daytime energy costs.

Regional businesses often qualify for multiple small grants, so schedule an audit early in your planning to identify all available incentives.

Turn Australian Tax Deductions into Business Advantage: Here’s How!

Government support isn’t just limited to rebates; tax incentives can be just as valuable.

Instant Asset Write-Off & Temporary Full Expensing

Businesses installing solar can often write off the full cost of the system in the year it is installed, resulting in significant reductions in taxable income. This also:

Improves cash flow in the year of investment.
Can stack with rebates.

Before installing, consult your solar installer to ensure you’re claiming the maximum allowable deduction and that the structure aligns with your business’s tax year.

Standard Depreciation

Even if you don’t qualify for instant write-offs, solar is still a depreciating asset. You can claim deductions over its useful life, typically 20+ years, blending your return through ongoing tax savings.

Let’s Explore Strategic Funding & Innovative Financing Methods

You don’t have to own the system outright to enjoy the benefit:

Environmental Upgrade Agreements (EUAs)

There are councils, such as Environmental Upgrade Agreements (EUAs), that link loans to your property, allowing you to finance energy upgrades through your rates rather than traditional debt, often at better rates and longer terms.

In this method, solar starts saving money immediately, and a new cash-flow strategy makes solar accessible even without large upfront capital.

Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs)

With a PPA, a third party installs and owns the solar system, and you buy the energy at a reduced rate for 7–15 years.

What are the benefits:

Zero upfront cost.
Consistent electricity pricing.
Reduced risk.

A PPA may not generate STCs for you, but it can reduce out-of-pocket costs and be more financially advantageous for smaller businesses or those with constrained budgets.

Plan Your Install with Timing & Market Awareness

If you plan to install solar on your commercial property, timing is very crucial. The reason is simple and straightforward.

The rebate values decline over time. The SRES scheme reduces the number of certificates annually as 2030 approaches.
The battery rebates also step down periodically.

Therefore, all you need to do is book an appointment early, obtain free quotes, sign contracts, and schedule installations early in the financial year to secure the highest possible rebate.

How To Qualify for Maximum Returns?

In Australia, if you want to qualify for federal incentives, you must follow these two rules:

Panels and inverters must be Clean Energy Council (CEC) approved.
Installer must be accredited (Solar Accreditation Australia or equivalent).

Be aware! Skipping an accredited installer or choosing low-quality equipment can disqualify you from getting rebates, so always verify credentials and approvals.

Financial Metrics That Matter: Cash Flow, ROI & Payback

Understanding your commercial solar project isn’t just about grabbing rebates; it’s about making them count. Here’s how to approach it:

Build a 10-Year Financial Model

Include:

Upfront costs before rebates
Rebate cash inflows (STCs, state grants, battery subsidies)
Tax deductions
Avoided electricity purchases
Revenue streams (LGCs for large systems)

Then calculate:

Payback period
Net Present Value (NPV)
Internal Rate of Return (IRR)

In most cases, businesses with high daytime usage see paybacks in 3–6 years, which is far better than traditional capital investments.

End Notes

Beyond rebates and tax savings, commercial solar boosts your business in ways that don’t show up on a spreadsheet instantly. It brings:

Brand credibility: Customers increasingly want sustainable partners.

Energy resilience: During peak grid pricing or outages, solar + battery keeps the lights on.

ESG leadership: If you report on environmental goals, solar is a visible, measurable contribution.

By 2026, Australia’s commercial solar incentives will still be robust, but navigating them takes strategy:

Do this first:

Understand federal incentives (STCs, LGCs, battery rebate)
Explore state rebates and stacking opportunities
Talk to your accountant about tax deductions
Get multiple quotes and install early in the year
Choose an accredited installer and products

And then:

Consider financing alternatives like EUAs or PPAs
Build a financial model before signing on the dotted line
Look beyond dollars to brand and operational resilience

Finally, the clean energy transition isn’t just an environmental choice; it’s a smart commercial move. With thoughtful planning and the right rebate stack, commercial solar in 2026 can be one of the most lucrative sustainability investments your business makes.

Ready to go solar?

Start with a trusted installer like Cyanergy, get a tailored quotation, and lock in every available rebate before they step down.

Your Solution Is Just a Click Away

The post Maximise Government Rebates for Commercial Solar in 2026 appeared first on Cyanergy.

https://cyanergy.com.au/blog/maximise-government-rebates-for-commercial-solar-in-2026/

Renewable Energy

Voters’ Priorities

Published

1 day ago

January 23, 2026

Alice Rush

For the ~55% of us who vehemently disapprove of Trump, it’s getting him out of office before he turns the United States into Russia or China.

Voters’ Priorities

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CanREA Operators Summit Tackles Aging Fleets

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2 days ago

January 22, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

CanREA Operators Summit Tackles Aging Fleets

Allen and Joel are joined by Mathieu Cōté from CanREA to preview the upcoming Operators Summit in Toronto. With many Canadian wind projects reaching 17-20 years old, the industry faces critical decisions about extending, repowering, or decommissioning assets. Register now!

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Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow.

Allen Hall: Matt, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. Well, the theme of this Year’s Operator Summit is coming of age and. There’s a lot of things happening in the renewable side up in Canada. What does that mean for Canadian renewable energy operators right now?

Mathieu Cōté: Well, we came up with coming of age because, um, the fleet in Canada is in a bit of a different space than it is in the States where, uh, right now we’ve got a lot of projects that are on the cusp of coming to their end of initial lifetime.

Right. They’re in that. 17 to 20 year range. There’s some that are a little bit past, and so you, as an operator, you gotta be asking yourself, is this the time to extend this project? What do I have to do [00:01:00] if I need to extend? Um, or am I repowering, am I taking things down, putting them up? And I mean, there’s a lot of different variables there.

Sometimes it’s just a re topping, sometimes it’s everything down to ground level and go again. Or it’s, maybe it’s a decommissioning and those decisions are on the cusp of being made in the operation space in Canada. So that’s, that’s a super important part of it. But the other side of it, and the reason we liked, uh, coming of age is from the industry perspective itself.

We are no longer the new kid on the block, right? We are now a reliable, uh, professional industry that can deliver power when you need it. Uh, so that’s what we’re trying to, to convey with this coming of age. And, and we’ve got some really good speakers who are gonna talk about that, uh, from. The grid operator’s perspective saying, why is it that renewables are one of the first things they reach for now when they realize they need more power?

Joel Saxum: I think it’s an interesting space and I think to, to [00:02:00]comment more deeply on that, right? That you guys are in that, you

Mathieu Cōté: know,

Joel Saxum: 2005, six you started installing a

Mathieu Cōté: lot of the, a lot of wind assets. There was a curve of, as it as every year you get more and more. Trickle and then becomes a flood quite quickly.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. And, and, and you know, from, from the operation standpoint, we deal with some of the wind farms in Canada. We love working with, uh, the operators up there because they do exude that professionalism. They’re on top of their game. They know they’ve gotta maintain these things. Whereas in the states, we’ve been a little bit nascent sometimes and, oh, we got PTC coming so we don’t have to do these certain things.

Little bit more cowboy. Yeah. Yeah. And up in Canada, they’re, they’re, they’ve been doing the right things for a long time. Um, and I think it’s a good, good model to follow, but you’re a hundred percent correct. We’re coming to that time when it’s like decision time to be made here. And I think we, in our, in our uh, kind of off air chat, you had mentioned that, you know, repower in Canada is.

Pretty early stages. I

Mathieu Cōté: only know about

Joel Saxum: one,

Mathieu Cōté: to [00:03:00] be honest, and I try and keep track of these things,

Joel Saxum: but that’s coming down the pipeline,

Mathieu Cōté: right? So there’s gonna be more and more of these happening. And I mean, there are a lot of operators that have one foot on either side of the border, so some people have some operational experience on what steps you need to take, but it’s also from the regulatory side, like what is your grid operator gonna insist on?

So on and so on. But, uh, so we’ve got some panels to talk about things like, one of my favorites is, uh, how much life is left in your machine? And that’s sort of a deeper dive from an engineering standpoint. Like what math do the engineers do to assess, is this foundation good to go for another 10 years?

Is this tower gonna stand up to whatever? Should we replace the blades and all those components? We, we’ve got a foundation expert, uh, someone who does. Digital twin sort of things as well as, um, a panelist from, uh, Nordex, so the OEM sort of perspective as well, and how they assess how much [00:04:00] life is left in a machine.

So like that’s the sort of panels that we’re trying to put together that we’re pretty excited about.

Joel Saxum: Well, I think that’s a good one too, because I know Alan and I we’re talking around the industry globally. A lot of it is around CMS. And when we say CMS, we’re not just talking drive train anymore, we’re talking everything you can in the turbine, right?

So the, the concept of remaining useful life, r ul, that always comes up, where are we at with this, right? Because from a global perspective in Europe, they have, you know, in Spanish wind farms are all, a lot of ’em are at that 25 year mark. What are we doing here? So you guys are bringing that conversation to the Canadian market at this operator summit in Toronto here in February.

It’s, it’s timely, right? Because it’s February and everybody’s getting ready for spring, so you got a little bit of time to come to the conference.

Mathieu Cōté: Well, and that’s one of the things that we actually used to do is show in April and we’ve moved it back after hearing feedback from our, from our audience that April’s almost too late, right?

Like, if you’re doing your assessments for your [00:05:00] blades, it where? Where’s your manpower coming up? Coming from in the summertime? Those contracts are already signed. By the time you hit April, February, you’ve still got time. Your RFP might be out so you can meet all the proponents on site at once. It, it just makes a lot more sense for us to do it in February.

Allen Hall: Well, there’s a wide range of technology in Canada in regards to wind to energy. That adds to the complexity where a lot of turbines, unlike the United States, are maybe even sub one megawatt, and with new turbines coming online, they’re gonna be in the five, six, maybe even seven megawatt range. That’s a huge dispersed.

Industry to try to maintain massive range. Yeah. Right. And I, and, and I think one of the dilemmas about that is trying to find people who understand that tho all those different kinds of machines and the intricacies of each one of them and how to operate them more efficiently, which is where Canada is.

Quite honestly. The, the thing [00:06:00] about that and the challenge for Canada Head, and this is why the conference is so important, is. If there’s someone in Canada that has the answer, as Joel and I have talked to a number of Canadian operators, you may not know them. I know it’s a smaller marketplace in general, but unless you’re talking to one another, you probably, uh, don’t realize there’s, there’s help within Canada.

And these conferences really highlight that quite a bit. Wanna talk about some of the, sort of the interactions you guys create at the conference?

Mathieu Cōté: Yeah. Oh, well, it’s one of the things that can RIA tries to do is play that connector role, right? Like, we don’t know everything, but like you say, we know someone who knows something and we can put you in touch with all.

I know a guy who knows a guy. Um, but we’re, we’re always able to, to, to connect those dots. And I mean, we, we do a lot of, uh. Things like working groups and uh, regional meetings. And, uh, we’ve even got, uh, different summits for different things. Getting a little bit outside of operations, but like we [00:07:00] have an Atlantic operators group that gathers together and has a chat just sometimes, usually there’s a focus topic, but then we have, oh, how do you guys deal with the storm that came through?

Or that sort of thing, or what, what do you do for if you need a new blade or has anyone got a good vendor for this thing or that thing? Those sorts of things always happen in the margins. And I mean, the ops summit is the, the best one of those because it’s the entire Canadian industry that gets together.

We’ve got folks from bc, we’ve got folks from Atlantic Canada, there’s gonna be people from Quebec, and there’s vendors from all those places as well. Right? So. It’s covering all your bases and it’s the one place that you can talk to everybody and meet everybody in like a 48 hour period.

Joel Saxum: Well, I think that if, you know, just doing a little bit of deep dive into the agenda and the program here, that’s one of the things that you guys are focusing on.

Targeted networking. So morning breakfasts, evening receptions, there, you know, structured and informal, uh, opportunities to actually connect with the o and m [00:08:00] community. Um, one of them that you had mentioned was kind of, um. Hands-on demonstrations and, and for me, when, when I see these things, ’cause I’ve seen them kind of slightly not, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody do it perfectly well.

I’m excited to see what you guys do. But you get, you get a group of people standing around, like you get people kind of standing around. Rubbing elbows going, like, what do you think about that? What is, does this, is this gonna work? And, and those to me are great, great conversations for networking and kind of figuring things out together.

The collaboration part.

Mathieu Cōté: Absolutely. Uh, well on those two points, the, the networking has always been a huge part of this show, and we’ve always built into the program. Okay. There’s some stuff on stage, but then there’s a break. And I mean, you can wander around the showroom floor and you can, but you can talk to the other people.

And, uh, that’s a big part of this. That’s an important part of this. And then on the, the demonstrations and so on, we used to have what we called, uh, elevator pitches, uh, where, and we’ve done it various different ways where people get five minutes, one slide, you’re on [00:09:00] stage, you say your piece, you give us your elevator pitch, and then you get off and someone else gets up and talks.

And we found that, that, and the feedback we got was that that was good because that condensed all of the salesy parts and kept it away from the panels. ’cause the panels, we want them to be informative, not. Selling you something. We want you to learn something. But the sales pitch is, there is some sense of like someone’s trying to sell you a thing.

But we’re evolving that a little bit this year where we’re going towards demonstrations. So on the showroom floor, there will be someone who will have a tangible thing, whether it’s here’s the new fireproof coat that we’ve come up with, or here’s how this, uh, sling works, or here’s this piece of kit that fits on your machine that catches bolts when they break, or whatever it is.

Here’s how it actually works, and they’ve got it in their hands and they can play with the go until it, uh, really, like you say, gets that light bulb moment that gets you to see how it works. And you can see that ROI [00:10:00] right away going, oh, okay. That if it catches the bolts when they break, then it doesn’t rattle around.

And then I’ve gotta spend X amount less time fixing, missed out. Or the other thing, like it’s, it, it’s a, it’s a better way of doing it is, uh, what we feel. And like you say, then you get. Being on the showroom floor, it’s in amongst the booths. So people who are on the showroom floor can just sort of look over their shoulder, see that, okay, I really gotta go check out that guy.

Joel Saxum: I like the idea of the format and there’s a couple other things like lessons learned track we talked about a little bit too. But one of the things for me for trade shows is when Alan and I went to ETC in Calgary a few years ago, two years ago I think. Yep. You actually had the. The conversations, the panel conversations, the discussions, the knowledge sharing happening on the showroom floor.

I don’t like going to a conference where I have to go in, like I’m talking with some people, but, oh, I gotta run across this thing across over here, a mile away into some back room to listen to someone talk about something. I like, I like being where the information is [00:11:00] happening and sharing, and I can stand off to the side and listen a bit and, and still engage.

Um, and you guys are doing some more of that too through the lessons learned track. Um, can you explain that a little bit to us?

Mathieu Cōté: Well, we’ve always had, uh, like a, some split in concurrent sessions and so on. But to your point of not running off to the other end, we’re in a pretty intimate space where we’ve got like a room for lunch and the plenaries, we’ve got a room for the exhibit hall, and then right next to it is any of the, uh, off to the side stuff.

It’s all within a one minute walk of, of itself, which is much better. So we’ve got the concurrent, uh, sessions and. This year we split them instead of into two. We split ’em into three though that then we’ve got one for specific to wind. We’ve got one specific to solar and storage. ’cause we are renewable energy, not just wind.

And then we’ve got one, uh, that’s a bit of a grab bag and it’s a bit of a different format. So instead of your traditional three [00:12:00] panelists plus a moderator, everyone’s got a slide, everyone’s gotta talk, blah, blah, blah. This thing, it, it’s much more focused. You’ve got one person who’s got a real important thing to say, whether it’s, here’s, uh, lessons learned on how our hub fell off and here’s what we learned from it.

Here’s our root cause analysis, or here’s, uh, a much better way of doing, uh, our health and safety program has worked much better for us. Here’s what we gain from it, or whatever happens to be. And then one moderator to ask them some questions, pick apart. So this part, how to, uh, and get a bit of a, a flow there.

So, and it’s much shorter. Instead of an hour long, it’s only a half hour. So then you don’t have to sit through two people. You don’t care about to listen to the one person that you do is the intent of these, uh, lessons learned? I,

Joel Saxum: I do really like the concept simply because when I go to an event or like, um, putting something together, I want people to be able to go.

Learn something, take it back to their respective [00:13:00] organization, be able to implement it tomorrow. And it sounds like you guys are really moving towards that with the lessons learned, the collaboration and the knowledge sharing.

Mathieu Cōté: That’s, that’s the intent. And that, and that’s really what it is, is I, I’m, I think I’m a smart guy, but I don’t have all the answers.

So we’re really trying to shine a light on the people who do, and like, here’s a thing that the industry as a whole should learn about. And give them some time to talk about it. And like you say, then you’ll get some of those conversations in the margins and in in between going, yeah, this guy had this thing to say.

We get that sort of dialogue going. That’s, that’s the intent. It’s all about, uh, discussions and learning from each other.

Joel Saxum: To me, it sounds like even, um, for lack of a, maybe a trip to get some poutine and maybe an American, American should go out there and listen to some of the stuff you guys have to say as well.

Mathieu Cōté: Honestly, it’s, it’s worth it for, uh, Americans to come by and we do have a significant number, proportion of the, the audience comes from the states as well. Because like you say, it’s, it’s worth it and it’s good information and it’s a good [00:14:00] portion of the thing. And it’s really not that far. And I mean, um, not to put it lightly, we do tend to lean a little heavier on some of the more, uh, Canadian elements like weather.

Like we do have a panel this year, um, on the solar side, solar operations and adverse conditions. And that one, um. Because that one came from, uh, I know a guy at, uh, natural Resources Canada, who was part of a working group at the International Energy Agency in their photovoltaic power systems group, where they came up with, uh, a report on operations in all kinds of adverse conditions around the world.

So he’s gonna present that report and we’ll have a panel discussion. The other panelists there, we’ve got, um. Ben Power, the CEO of ves, who is the number one installer of solar in the Yukon, right next to Alaska. So they know a lot about adverse conditions and then, uh, polar racking, they’ve got a lot of experience, uh, with that sort of thing too.

And they’ve got some data that they’re gonna bring to the [00:15:00] panel as well. So it should be a really good discussion about how do we deal with bad things happening in solar specifically.

Allen Hall: Well, sure. Uh, Canada’s been running assets a lot longer than we have been in the States. In fact, to Joel’s earlier point, we’re repairing.

Disassembling putting new stuff up all the time. Canada has been more focused on keeping existing equipment running in some crazy, harsh conditions. The US is moving that way. You wanna know about ice? We could tell you about ice. Exactly. Like how many times has the US run into trouble with icing on wind turbines and we should have been talking to, or her neighbors through the north, but in a lot of cases, yeah.

The I, I find that the time I went. I learned a whole bunch about Canadian operations, how to think about some of these problems differently. That was the beauty of a attending a Kria event, and I know there’s gonna be a lot of people attending this event. Who is it for in general? Obviously [00:16:00] it’s for operators, but is there some value here for like asset managers?

Some of the engineers, some of the service providers,

Mathieu Cōté: yeah. That our, our core market, if you want, is your site managers and your technical people, but engineers, 100%, they will learn something. Your asset managers will definitely have some value in it, whether it’s learning about the technology or learning about, uh, the, the latest things coming out or even just.

Best practices from other folks, right? We’ve also got, uh, more and more we’re getting people from the insurance industry getting involved because some of these, uh, lessons learned and so on, is really valuable to them. And we’re even running, um, if, if people are in insurance, we have a special meeting for insurance.

The, the day before where we’ll be having a, a dialogue between the insurance industry and the operators and like, here’s how we deal with this. This is why the prices are that. And, uh, talk about that risk transfer type stuff. There are the odd developer who comes out. Um, but it’s more for the, [00:17:00] like, once it’s in the ground, the technical people, uh, the tooling manufacturers, the service providers, the, all, all of those folks.

Joel Saxum: What about ISPs? Oh, a hundred percent. We know quite a few ISPs up in Canada. Every one of them that I’ve talked to is coming. So ev I’ve had the conversations and like I, you know, we’re, we’re doing some other things in February as well around here, and I was, Hey, what are you guys? Oh, we’re all going to the Candry Ops summit.

We’re going to the Candry Ops summit, so to Toronto and February. Um, bring your warm jacket. I suppose it could be cold. Yeah, the, the ISPs will be there in, in full force. And so I think that. To me, it’s like the, the, the cousin to the A-C-P-O-M-S. We like OMS in the states because that’s where the real discussions happen around operations and maintenance.

Mathieu Cōté: The technical stuff happens. Yeah. And it, I like to say it’s the, the, the younger cousin, if you will, and the maple syrup cousin.

Allen Hall: Well, I do think though, that when we’re at, uh, o, M and S Joel, that [00:18:00] those discussions are a little bit different than what I see up at Kria. Like Kria is a. Community OMS is, yeah, we, we all know one another and maybe it’s just there’s this, a bigger event or more people, but it, I don’t feel the sort of connection I do when I’m at Kria.

Like I know the people, I understand what’s going on at Kria. That’s what makes it fun that I get to see people that I, I know once in a while, but at the same time there is a huge, massive amount of. Sharing

Mathieu Cōté: that community that you speak to, that that’s really what we’re trying to, to gather in. And there’s a difference of scale too.

I mean, uh, the OMS is like 3000 people and we’re three to 400. So there, there’s a difference there. But that sort of intimacy leads to a fair bit more of that sharing that you’re talking about and like that Oh yeah, there’s that guy. Oh, there’s Derek from Capstone, or there’s Dan from EDF or there, you know, and then you.

You run into them and then you, you catch [00:19:00] up on all the latest and, um, what’s going on, how are things going? And so on and so on. And there’s time for all of that in the, in the two day show that we have.

Joel Saxum: Well, I think collaboration in a smaller, like the right size group is, is much easier and flows better.

Right? Once you get to that thousand two, three, 4,000, it’s like, yeah, you’re there, you’re seeing the people, but like it’s just not the same.

Mathieu Cōté: Et c is somewhere around 3000 people and it, it, it’s got that heft. It’s a different audience as well. Right? The o and m crowd isn’t there as much. It’s not quite as technical, so it it, it’s a speaking to a different group of people.

Allen Hall: Well, Canada is on a growth spurt for renewables. There’s a lot of wind energy

Mathieu Cōté: headed up towards Quebec. There are procurement’s open right now in Quebec, Nova Scotia, new Brunswick. Uh, Ontario, BC and Manitoba

Joel Saxum: Plus, what was it? Fi what was it? Five offshore lease areas off of Nova Scotia.

Mathieu Cōté: Yeah, they’re looking at up to five gigawatts offshore in Nova Scotia.

We don’t have [00:20:00] any yet in Nova in, uh, offshore. And there’s some, they need to figure out what the offtake is and where the transmission goes. Uh, but there’s a lot of people working in the background on MA putting that together. So it’s growing. Oh, a hundred percent. It’s growing and across the board, right.

And the. Wind or solar or storage or all three. And that, that a lot of the, the procurements these days are starting to move in a direction of, uh, sort of a technology agnostic where they say, we need megawatts. We don’t care how you make them. We just want electricity. Well, electricity, uh, but also electricity capacity.

So in the one case we figure wind and solar will do quite well, and in the other we’ll figure the battery storage will do quite well. So no matter what and in the timelines that they’re asking for, we’re looking at if you want it in the next five years, it’s probably gonna be wind and solar because anything else is gonna be a seven plus year timeline to get into the ground.

So [00:21:00] there, there’s a lot. There’s a lot coming.

Allen Hall: Well, up to 20% of the energy, electricity in Canada nationally is gonna be generated by renewables in less than 10 years.

Mathieu Cōté: Canada’s split up a lot, remember like, and Quebec is already at 90 plus with their hydro and bc same thing.

Joel Saxum: And I, and I think that that’s something to be, to be shared as well here is from an o and m standpoint.

The, the varied geographies of Canada and how spread apart it is, there’s specialized knowledge up there to, to, to, you know, till the cow come home. So it’s a great place to go and learn. I would encourage people, hey, if you’re, if you’re in anywhere around Michigan, the Great Lakes Toronto’s a three hour drive.

Go there, do the conference and learn something,

Mathieu Cōté: and hey, we’re right next to the airport. It’s quick flight. Almost anywhere from North America, right? So Toronto’s easy to get in and

Allen Hall: out of, and this is gonna be a great event. The Can Operators Summit. It’s February 11th and 12th at the Delta Hotel by [00:22:00] Marriott, Toronto, right at the airport.

So you, you can’t miss it. It’s easy to get in, easy to get out. You’re gonna have a great time. Matt, how do they connect and register for this event?

Mathieu Cōté: We have a registration link that I’m sure we’ll put somewhere. Um, or come to our website, kenia.ca?

Allen Hall: Yeah, just Google Can Operator Summit. That’s what I did.

And that takes you right to the registration. Get signed up there. It’s inexpensive in Toronto is a really cool city. February 11th and 12th. At the Delta Hotels by Marriott, right at the airport. The Canary Operator Summer is going to be a lot of fun. Matt, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Really enjoyed having you. Well, thanks for having [00:23:00] me.