Albany-area solar firm to open Binghamton office this summer

Will invest $2 million and add 20 new jobs

BINGHAMTON — Monolith Solar Associates, a Rensselaer–based solar-installation business, on May 5 announced plans to open a regional office in the Binghamton area, creating 20 new jobs.

But it has yet to pinpoint a location for the office, says Steven Erby, vice president and co-founder of Monolith, who spoke with the Business Journal News Network on May 6.

“We’ll know when we walk in the front door … This is where we want to hang the sign,” Erby says.

For Monolith, Binghamton is “centrally located” because the firm has worked on projects in the area and has others it will focus on, he says.

“We have a lot of projects that we’ve already signed … [and] a couple we’ve already built,” he says. 

Monolith already has salespeople who live in the Binghamton area and work from home, but drive to Rensselaer to get updates on the firm’s activities. Erby believes a more central location will “boost morale” for the firm’s employees in the Southern Tier.

“We’re hoping to have a rental space by … the end of July, just so we have a place to dispatch our crews and that our salespeople have a place to meet in the morning,” Erby says.

Monolith Solar Associates is planning to invest about $2 million in the effort, he says.

Monolith provides solar-energy equipment for commercial and residential buildings, and schools and municipal structures.

The firm currently has offices in Rensselaer and Kansas City, Mo. It employs 53 people total and hopes to increase its employee count to between 90 and 100, which includes the new employees in Binghamton. 

Monolith says it typically installs a solar PV (photovoltaic) system at no cost to the property owner, and then sells electricity at rates substantially below what it costs to purchase from the grid.

“Typically 20 percent less than they’re paying National Grid,” Erby says of the rates.

Both Erby and Mark Fobare, the firm’s president and CEO, in 2009 founded Monolith Solar in Rensselaer, just across the Hudson River from Albany. Since then, it has grown to become “one of the largest solar-installation companies in the country,” the firm contended in a news release. 

“The biggest thing we do is educate. We educate the consumers on the fact that there is a cheaper source of energy that’s renewable,” says Erby.

Since its inception, Monolith says it has installed more than 8 million watts of solar capacity. Its growth into Western New York will enable the company to triple that figure over the next 18 months.

“We need to have technicians and sales force in place to meet the expected demand and coordinate our activities outside the Capital Region. This move is actually overdue,” Fobare said in the release.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s NY-Sun initiative, launched in 2012, has made New York a “hotbed of solar-resource innovation and expansion,” Monolith said in its release, and contended it has been “instrumental” in that “transformation.” 

The company pointed to a recent funding announcement targeting NY-Sun.

Cuomo on April 24 announced a nearly $1 billion commitment to NY-Sun, which will significantly expand deployment of solar capacity throughout the state and transform New York’s solar industry to a “sustainable, subsidy-free sector.”

That’s according to the website for the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).

The NY-Sun initiative provides long-term funding certainty that will boost existing businesses and attract new investments to New York from global solar companies for greater economic growth, NYSERDA said.

“New York has one of the best solar initiatives that is out there,” Erby contends.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com