Atlasta Solar Company continues to grow, and its new location can accommodate it

Tim Harty, The Business Times

ore space and the ability to operate with less overhead and greater efficiency are what Atlasta Solar Center got with the January move of its headquarters and operations to 25 Road.

Another appealing part of the change is Atlasta Solar Center owns its new building at 584 25 Road, where it is flanked to the north by Amigo Animal Clinic, flanked to the south by Canvas Products and sits across the road from 970 Marine.

Matt Fowler, an Atlasta Solar Center co-owner and director of sales and marketing, said there was nothing wrong with 1111 S. Seventh St., its home since 2012, but its new location comes with more space for a growing business that can use it.

“We’ve got an additional 2,100 square feet of yard storage space, outside yard storage space,” Fowler said. “We have an additional 3,300 square feet of office space. That’s huge. That’s critical for our team. Our operations department has grown significantly. We’ve brought our engineer back in-house; since COVID, he’d been working from home. And then we also have a service department established.”

Atlasta also got an additional 1,100 square feet of warehouse space.

“So, 3,300 office, 1,100 warehouse, those are both really big improvements,” Fowler said, “and to boot, we’re saving money on overhead, paying a mortgage versus rent. So we’re able to pass some of those savings on to our customers, which we’re really happy about.”

Fowler said the service department services existing solar systems, which is important to customers and sets Atlasta Solar Center apart from many solar-installation competitors. Some solar companies do the installation, he said, then are never seen again by the homeowner or business.

“We’ve got an in-house, dedicated service department,” Fowler said. “And we work on anybody’s systems. We don’t just work on our own systems. There are solar companies out there that will only service systems that they’ve installed. We service what are called orphaned solar systems.”

Fowler also made it a point to mention one of Atlasta’s lead installers, Ian Lafferty, is now a master electrician.

“It’s very noteworthy,” Fowler said. “He worked very hard on doing that, passed the test his first time (taking it), which not very many people do.”

The 25 Road location’s additional storage comes with the benefit of an annex warehouse that allows Atlasta Solar Center to separate its solar-specific inventory from its electrical-specific inventory.

As a result, Fowler said, “We’ve improved our efficiencies internally with our inventory.”

Inside the main building, Fowler thinks customers are going to like the “new and improved showroom” and the additional meeting space.

“We’ve always had a showroom,” said Fowler, adding that’s not common for solar companies to have one. “We’ve always been a company where you can walk in and actually look at the products that are going to go up on your roof. It’s very important for our customers … and we’ll have more space to show our products.”

Another thing customers tend to like is places to park, and Fowler said there’s much more customer parking now than Atlasta had previously.

Employees have reason to smile, too, when it comes to extra office space, and Fowler pointed out it’s no small detail that the new location has one more bathroom.

Moreover, there will be extra bodies in the building soon.

“We are still in a position of growth,” he said. “We’ve got a couple job openings right now. We got a couple spots to fill on our team, both sales and installation.”

Important date for commercial tax credit

While the end of 2025 brought an end to the sizable tax credit that residential solar customers used to enjoy, commercial solar customers still have a 30 percent tax credit through the end of this year.

But Atlasta Solar Center co-owner and Sales and Marketing Director Matt Fowler said commercial customers need to keep July 4 front of mind.

“This is very important,” he said. “If a commercial entity puts a 5 percent down payment before July 4th of this year, they have two years to install the project. It’s called Safe Harbor, and they will get the 30 percent tax credit.

“If they wait till after July 6th, they have to install the system this year to get the tax credit, which is virtually impossible. So, any commercial entity that is considering solar, it’s a refundable 5 percent down payment, to a point – once we’ve spent that money on permits and things, we can’t refund it – but it’s a refundable 5 percent down payment. If a commercial entity is considering or has considered solar, now would be a good time to lock in that tax credit, and then they have two years to figure out all the details.”

Fowler added, “And there are people doing that.”

No tax credit, no problem

Residential solar customers may not have the incentive of a tax credit any more, but Fowler said Atlasta Solar Center is offering something they may want to seize upon.

“We’re having a, call it a moving sale, if you will, long term,” he said “It’s 20 percent off whatever price we would have quoted you. So, what that means is it’s basically back when we had the tax credit, the tax rate was 30 percent of the system cost got credited to you on your income taxes. … Now it’s a 20 percent discount. So, instead of paying $10,000, you pay $8,000. … You’re paying 20 percent off the sticker price, if you will. That’s one thing that we definitely want to announce and let people know.”