NAZ Solar Electric supplies solar equipment and system design to independently owned businesses: convenience stores and bodegas, gas stations, hotels and motels, car dealerships, restaurants, and small offices. We have been a solar equipment distributor in Flagstaff, Arizona since 1979, and we ship nationwide.

Buying equipment directly rather than as an installed package gives you component-level pricing, control over who does the work, and the option to phase a project instead of committing to all of it at once. Our solar application engineers help you size the system and confirm the components work together. Call 800-383-0195 or talk to an engineer.

Two Different Reasons to Look at Solar

Small commercial buildings run their heaviest loads while the sun is up. Refrigeration, air conditioning, lighting, and point of sale all draw during business hours, so a high share of what an array produces gets consumed on site instead of exported. That is the bill argument, and for a business on thin margins it turns a variable cost into a more predictable one.

The second reason is different and often the one that actually prompts the call. When the power goes out, an independent business stops earning. Registers go down, cards won't process, coolers start warming, and customers leave. A grid-tied array does nothing about that, because it shuts off with the utility. Batteries are what change it.

Which of those two you care about more shapes the entire system, so it is the first thing to settle.

By Business Type

The equipment list is broadly similar across small commercial buildings. What differs is which loads matter most when something goes wrong, and that is what changes the design.

Gas stations and fuel retail

A station's daytime consumption is steady and substantial: cooler cases, canopy and lot lighting, HVAC, signage, cameras, and networking. That profile suits solar well on the bill side.

On the resilience side, be clear about what is being solved. Backing up fuel dispensers is specialized work involving hazardous-location wiring and requirements that vary by jurisdiction, and it is not something we design. What we can help with is the rest of the business: keeping refrigeration, point of sale, interior and exterior lighting, cameras, and communications running so the store side keeps trading and the site stays safe and lit.

Convenience stores and bodegas

Refrigeration is most of the electric bill and most of the risk. An outage costs a neighborhood store twice: transactions it cannot process, and inventory warming in the coolers behind it.

Backup design here turns on compressor behavior, since a refrigeration compressor draws far more current starting than running, and on choosing which circuits to carry. We cover both in detail on our cold storage and refrigeration backup page, which applies directly to walk-ins, reach-ins, and beverage coolers in a retail setting.

Solar panels for hotels and motels

Independent hotels and motels carry a load profile no other small business has: the building never fully empties. Guest room heating and cooling, water heating, laundry, ice machines, exterior lighting, and Wi-Fi infrastructure run continuously, which means a hotel consumes solar production during the day and keeps consuming after dark. Solar energy systems for hospitality businesses are usually sized against that flat, year-round baseline rather than a seasonal peak.

One detail specific to hotels deserves a place in the design. Electronic door locks and the front desk system are what let guests into their rooms, and in a longer outage a property can end up with paying guests unable to reach their beds. Front desk, locks, communications, emergency lighting, and elevator controls where present are a small critical load compared with the whole building, and backing up that short list is what keeps a property operating rather than evacuating.

Car dealerships

Dealerships already draw for showroom and lot lighting, service bay compressors, lifts, HVAC, and signage. What is changing the picture is charging. Every EV and plug-in hybrid on the lot needs power, and customer and employee charging adds to it.

Solar can offset that consumption, but production and charging do not happen on the same schedule, so a workable approach usually combines solar with storage, scheduled charging, and load management rather than relying on the array alone. Charger count, output, and your available service capacity all drive the design, and service capacity is the constraint people discover last.

Offices, restaurants and storefronts

Solar panels for office buildings are among the most straightforward small commercial projects, because consumption tracks the working day almost exactly. Restaurants sit closer to convenience stores, with refrigeration, ventilation, and cooking loads that make the resilience case as strong as the bill case. Both are sized the same way: from twelve months of consumption and a clear list of what has to keep running.

Rooftop or Ground Mount?

Rooftop uses space you already have and suits most storefronts, stores, and motel buildings. The questions to answer first are roof age and condition, structural capacity, orientation, shading, and where existing equipment sits. Roof age matters more than anything else on the list: putting an array over a roof with a few years left in it means paying to remove and reinstall it later.

Ground mount suits properties with spare land. It gives you free choice of orientation and tilt, easier maintenance access, room to expand, and no dependence on roof condition. It costs more in racking and trenching, and it uses land you might want for something else.

Deciding What to Back Up

Running an entire commercial building from batteries takes a large bank and a large inverter. Running the handful of things that let the business keep earning takes a fraction of both, and the difference is usually the difference between a project that happens and one that stays a quote.

A critical-load panel separates the two. For most small businesses the short list is:

Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) is the usual chemistry for commercial backup, because it tolerates sitting at partial charge between events and holds up to daily cycling where a system is also being used to shift consumption. How much capacity you need comes from two numbers: what the critical list draws, and how many hours you want it to last.

Working With a Generator You Already Have

If there is already a generator on site, the useful question is not whether to remove it but how often it has to run. Batteries cover short outages instantly and silently, with no fuel and no start delay, which is most of what a business actually experiences. A generator earns its place on the long tail: the multi-day event where sizing storage to carry the load stops making financial sense. A system that coordinates solar, batteries, utility, and generator through transfer and energy management gets you fewer starts, shorter runtimes, and less fuel.

A Note on Demand Charges

Many commercial accounts are billed on two things: total energy used, and the highest rate of use reached during the period. That second figure is the demand charge, and equipment starting together can set it for the whole month. Solar with storage can in principle cover those peaks from the battery instead of the grid, but whether it does depends on your tariff, when your peaks fall, and how the system is controlled. We can explain how it interacts with equipment selection. We do not analyze utility tariffs or billing data, which is a conversation for your utility account representative or an energy consultant.

How We Size a Small Business System

Sizing starts with twelve months of utility bills, because a single month tells you almost nothing about a building with seasonal air conditioning or refrigeration. After that it comes down to two things: what the building draws, and what has to stay on when the utility doesn't.

The more of this you can send, the more accurate the recommendation:

Our solar application engineers will work through it with you and produce an equipment list. Design assistance is provided for systems purchased from NAZ Solar Electric. You can also start with our load calculator before you call. If you don't have all of this, send what you have and we'll tell you what matters most.

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