Adaeze Thornton installed her first residential solar array with a single helper and a borrowed truck, a job that took nearly a week longer than she'd budgeted because she was still learning the permitting process for the county. Five years later, her company, Lee County Solar Works, employs a crew of licensed installers and has completed projects across several counties in east Alabama.
"That first job, I probably made about a dollar an hour once you counted all the mistakes I made," Thornton said. "But I learned more in that one week than in any training course I'd taken before starting the company."
Starting Small in an Emerging Market
Thornton came to solar installation after working for several years as an electrician, a background she said gave her the technical foundation to understand the work but not necessarily the business knowledge needed to run a company. She started Lee County Solar Works focused primarily on residential rooftop systems, a market she said was still relatively unfamiliar to many homeowners in the area when she began.
"A lot of my early sales conversations were less about pitching a specific product and more about just explaining what solar even was and how it actually worked," Thornton said. "People had misconceptions about cost and reliability that we had to work through before we could even get to talking about a specific system."
As awareness of solar options has grown across the region, Thornton said the nature of her sales conversations has shifted from basic education toward more detailed discussions about system sizing, financing options, and how solar interacts with existing utility billing structures.
Expanding Into Small Commercial Projects
In addition to residential work, Lee County Solar Works has increasingly taken on smaller commercial projects, including rooftop systems for local businesses looking to offset a portion of their energy costs. Thornton said these projects tend to be more complex than residential installations, often requiring closer coordination with utility companies and more detailed engineering assessments.
"Commercial jobs are a different kind of challenge," Thornton said. "The systems are bigger, the stakes for getting it wrong are higher, and you're usually dealing with a building that's still operating during construction."
Thornton said the commercial side of the business has grown mostly through referrals from residential customers who happened to also own or manage local businesses, a pipeline she said has been more effective than any direct advertising the company has tried.
Building a Skilled Workforce in a Growing Industry
As demand has grown, Thornton has focused heavily on training and retaining skilled installers, an area she said remains one of the biggest constraints on how quickly the company can take on new projects. She has partnered with a regional trade program to help train new electricians specifically in solar installation techniques, hoping to build a more reliable pipeline of qualified workers.
"You can have all the customer demand in the world, but if you don't have trained crews to actually do the installation safely and correctly, none of that demand matters," Thornton said.
Looking ahead, Thornton said she expects continued growth in both the residential and commercial sides of the business, though she remains cautious about expanding beyond her ability to maintain quality control on every project. She still visits most job sites personally, a habit she said she's reluctant to give up even as the company grows.
"I still remember what it felt like to get that first installation wrong in small ways," Thornton said. "I never want to get far enough removed from the work that I stop noticing when something's not quite right."
