Energy Services: Heat Pumps, Solar and EV as a Growth Engine

Energy services are the fastest-growing line most electrical, plumbing and HVAC firms are not yet selling on purpose. Heat pumps, solar PV and EV chargers are no longer niche add-ons; they are three doors into the same house, they carry higher ticket values than repair work, and they open the door to recurring service revenue that repair work never does. The growth engine is not any single box. It is treating the three as one offer, pricing the subsidy into the quote so the customer sees the net number, and documenting the install well enough that the next job comes from the same address. Below is how a small firm builds that without hiring a specialist or betting the business on one product.

Why energy services are the growth engine right now

Three things line up at once, and they rarely do.

• Demand is policy-driven, not fashion-driven. Fossil heating is being phased down across most of Europe, grid electricity is getting cleaner, and homeowners are reacting to their own bills. That is durable demand, not a trend that reverses next season.
• The ticket is large. A heat pump or a solar array is a five-figure job. One good energy job can equal a month of call-outs, and it comes with a customer who has just decided to spend money on their home.
• Subsidy shrinks the objection. Most markets now discount this work at the point of sale or through tax, so the price the customer weighs is far below the sticker. Your competitor quoting gross looks expensive next to you quoting net.

The firms that win are not the ones with the cheapest panel. They are the ones who make the decision easy: one visit, one clear net price, one company standing behind heating, power and charging together.

The three doors, and how they connect

Sell them as a system and each install seeds the next. Here is how they relate and where the margin sits.

The EV charger is the wedge. It is a short job, the buyer has just spent on a car, and while you are at the consumer unit you can see the whole electrical picture. A charger install is where the solar and heat-pump conversation starts, not where it ends.

Bundle the offer, do not sell one box

The single biggest lever is refusing to quote in isolation. A homeowner who wants a charger has, almost by definition, thought about their energy use. Quote the charger, and on the same document note what solar would do to its running cost, and what a heat pump would do to their heating bill. You are not upselling; you are the one tradesperson in their inbox who saw the whole house.

• Do one survey, produce one plan. Measure the roof, the consumer unit and the heating system in a single visit even if they only asked about one thing.
• Show the net price on every line. Gross price, subsidy, net. The customer decides on the net number, so put it in front of them.
• Sequence it for them. Charger now, solar in spring, battery when the array is paying. A phased plan books three jobs from one visit instead of losing two of them to whoever quotes next.

Price the subsidy into the quote

Energy work is subsidised almost everywhere, and the mechanics differ by country. What does not differ: the customer wants to see the price after support, and the firm that shows it wins.

In Sweden, the green-technology tax credit (grön teknik) is deducted at the point of invoice, the same way ROT works for renovation labour. It is a separate scheme from ROT, it covers solar cells, home batteries and EV charging points at their own rates, and the installer claims the money back from Skatteverket after the customer has paid their reduced share. The exact percentages and ceilings change, so confirm the current rates at skatteverket.se before you print a net figure. The practical point is that the customer never fronts the full amount, so your quote should never show it as the number they pay.

Outside Sweden the shape repeats under different names. The UK zero-rates VAT on many energy-saving materials such as heat pumps and solar, and runs grant schemes like the Boiler Upgrade Scheme for heat pumps; charger grants exist for specific property types. Whatever your market, the discipline is identical: find the scheme, learn exactly what qualifies, and build the deduction into the quote so the customer reads the net price first. Quoting gross and mentioning "you might get something back" loses to a competitor who did the arithmetic for them.

This is worth automating. When your quoting tool applies the deduction, shows the customer the net price, and holds the paperwork you need to reclaim it, you stop losing the credit to admin. OdinTask calculates ROT and green-tech deductions inside the quote and generates the reclaim file, so the net number the customer signs is the number you build the job around.

The recurring revenue nobody quotes for

The reason energy services beat one-off repair work is what comes after the install. A heat pump wants an annual service. Solar and batteries want monitoring and the occasional inverter fault seen to. Chargers get firmware and the odd fault. Every one of those is a service agreement waiting to be written.

• Attach a service plan at handover, not two years later when something breaks and they call someone else.
• Price it as a subscription: a fixed annual fee that covers the statutory check, a filter or firmware pass, and priority call-out.
• Let it compound. A hundred heat pumps under contract is a hundred booked visits a year before you sell anything new, and it is the base that carries you through a slow quarter.

The install is the customer-acquisition cost. The service agreement is the return. Firms that only sell the box are buying customers and then giving them away.

The paperwork that protects the margin

Energy work carries obligations that repair work does not, and getting them wrong turns a profitable job into a warranty liability. This is where a good system earns its keep.

• Electrical certification. Chargers, solar and heat-pump wiring are notifiable electrical work in most jurisdictions. In Sweden the installing firm must be registered with Elsäkerhetsverket; in the UK the install is certified and notified under the wiring regulations. Keep the certificate in the job file, not a drawer.
• Refrigerant reporting. Heat pumps contain F-gases. Above set thresholds they need periodic leak checks and reporting, and the technician handling refrigerant needs the right certification. Log the charge, the checks and the disposal from day one.
• Commissioning records. Sizing calculations, flow temperatures, string voltages, load-management settings. This is the evidence that defends you if the customer later says the system underperforms.
• Photo documentation. Before, during and after, timestamped and tied to the job. It settles disputes and it feeds the next quote at the same address.

Run all of it through one field system and the certificate, the refrigerant log, the commissioning sheet and the photos live on the job, not across three apps and a phone. That is the difference between a scalable energy-services line and a pile of liabilities.

A starting order for a firm that wants in

1. Lead with EV chargers. Short jobs, fast cash, and every one is a survey of the customer's whole electrical set-up.
2. Add solar once you can survey a roof and quote net. The subsidy arithmetic is the skill, not the panel.
3. Bring in heat pumps when you have the refrigerant certification and a design process. It is the highest ticket and the least forgiving of a sloppy install.
4. Attach a service agreement to every one. That is the growth engine, not the install itself.
5. Systematise the paperwork before you scale. The subsidy, the certificates and the commissioning records are the margin. Lose them to admin and the whole line stops paying.

Energy services reward the firm that treats heating, power and charging as one relationship with a home, priced net and documented properly, rather than three unrelated boxes sold to strangers. Get that right and each install books the next, and the growth engine runs itself.