Inovateus Solar Working Toward Carbon Neutral

Inovateus Solar LLC offers Midwest residential and commercial solar energy customers engineering, procurement, construction management, and maintenance services. Specializing in both rooftop- and ground-mounted solar energy projects, the firm has established over 515 megawatts of solar energy (a one-acre solar farm produces roughly 5 megawatts). Inovateus has helped create solar energy projects that produce enough energy to sustain 45,000 average homes for one entire year.

“We help our customers find the land, design an optimal system to sit on that land, and actually build it. We also do equipment and services supply,” says Tyler Kanczuzewski, Inovateus VP of Sustainability.  “There’s data proving that we are reducing a lot of carbon from going into the atmosphere.”

Inovateus Solar partnered with Schneider Electric to provide Shedd Aquarium’s 265-KW rooftop solar installation, which consists of 913 photovoltaic panels located on the aquarium’s marine mammal pavilion. It is the largest solar installation on any cultural institution in Illinois.

Over the past year, Inovateus Solar’s stewardship team was launched to focus on new sustainability efforts, with the ultimate goal of being operationally carbon neutral. Current efforts are reducing company waste going to landfills, recycling more materials, improving energy efficiencies, and reducing consumption of energy in all facility and job site operations.

“We’re really trying to be an educator about sustainability and renewable energy. We want to tell our story about being more sustainable in our operations and lifestyle and work with partners and vendors that believe in the same things and have the same passions,” Kanczuzewski says. “We’re trying to do more than make a couple bucks. We’re trying to grow clean, sustainable technology and education for a healthier earth.”

The IKEA Perryville 5-MW solar array is one of the largest rooftop projects in North America and features two di­fferent solar module technologies.

The Inovateus Stewardship Team would like to see the day when all plants manufacturing solar energy equipment consume no fossil fuels in production. They see solar as an integral part of a new green economy and green jobs growth.

“Solar is starting to become a major energy source and is proven to be a viable, sustainable energy source. It is taking whole [fossil fuel] power plants offline,” he says. “Solar energy is reducing carbon emissions and using a source of energy that’s shining on the earth all day, every day. That’s definitely sustainability.”

Inovateus Solar was a 2019 Southwest Michigan Sustainable Business of the Year.