Matt Fowler is part of the ownership team at Atlasta Solar Center.

He started as a marketing intern, and he really had no knowledge of solare energy.

The more he learned about the business, the more he became interested. Eventually, he and other employees had the opportunity to buy the company. That group of owners opened up a round of buying opportunities for the employees, so now the company is employee owned.

Fowler directs marketing for the company.

He is originally from Monument, Colorado and is now in Grand Junction. He and his wife enjoy skiing, riding motorcycles and raising their labradoodles.

Matt Fowler, Atlasta Solar Center.

MBT: What do you think is the reason people are choosing to go solar these days?

Fowler: Saving money, especially with with the economic concerns ­ — your electricity bill. You don’t always what your electric bill is, right? You have kind of an idea.

But with solar, you know exactly what that number is each month, and it makes it easier to budget.

Folks are also going solar because it really is, at the end of the day, it’s the right thing to do.

I tell everybody, my customers are all a little bit of green, whether it’s money or the environment.

Whether you want to save the planet, that’s obviously a huge part of solar or if you want to save money, that’s the other huge part of solar.

That’s That’s why folks are doing it. Because it works.

MBT: Is it a scam? 

Fowler: I’ve gone out and people ask me all the time, what’s the catch? Right? There’s no catch.

You’re just producing your electricity on your roof. That’s a hard concept for people. You know, as a marketing guy, you have to identify the need for your product, to get people to realize they need it.

And that’s a hard conversation with solar because we talk about kilowatt hours a lot. A lot of people even though they buy hundreds, if not thousands of them a month, they don’t know what a kilowatt hour is.

It’s power over time. That’s one kilowatt of energy over one hour, and your house can use 10 of those they could use 100 of those per day.

It all depends on how much electricity you are using every time they turn that switch. A lot of people don’t want to think about it. They just flip the switch and it works and you know, here in the US, we’re pretty fortunate to have that.

MBT: How does somebody buy from you guys? And what does that mean? 

Fowler: To get an estimate, what that entails is we need your name, address, email phone number.

We need your kilowatt hour usage. We like to look at the last 12 months of usage because we’re designing a system that offsets the change.

So you get a quote, just talk to us. You ask questions about the quote, sign the estimate and sign the quote and then we take care of the rest. We handle all of the paperwork with utility. You have a couple signatures there.

The installation happens most, almost every system we’re installing now is done in a day. Okay? Almost everything. So you’ve got you get an estimate, ask questions, sign the contract, installation, and then I come out and turn off the solar.

MBT: Do customers own the solar after that? 

Fowler: Yeah, almost everybody. We offer leases and financing, but that’s kind of a longer conversation. There’s various ways to finance systems, right.

Most people nowadays are paying part cash and financing the rest. That gives them a lower monthly payment than their electric bill. So if you’re paying $100 a month for electricity, and you pay some cash down and finance the rest, you could have a $90 finance payment, and you don’t have that $100 to DMEA or whoever it is.

MBT: What’s your favorite part about what you do what you do?

Fowler: Well, that’s a good question. I guess I like talking to people. I like getting to know everybody from all walks of life. Some people, especially as a marketer, you can understand target audience and demographics and stuff, but with solar, anybody that owns a home can go solar.

I get to meet so many people, and it’s pretty refreshing because it helps you realize that we’re more alike than you would think just looking at social media and the internet.

You know, I’ll work with a farmer in Hotchkiss who’s 70 and doesn’t want to do anything else other than save money.

And then we’ll work with someone in Grand Junction who’s getting solar they’re only doing it because they only care about the environment. So it’s really a wide variety people that we get to talk to.

MBT: What do you like about doing business in the Montrose area? 

Fowler: Wow supportive the community is. And that’s on the Western Slope in general. I’ve told a lot of people, everybody went through a lot of challenges in 2020.

I think if we were in any other area, we definitely wouldn’t have made it.

Our community here was so supportive throughout that, and  we were able to rest assured that we can keep going here.

And that really kind of drove the nail home there. It’s just the support.

I mean, when we’re out at events, we have people come up and tell us a story about how the founder (of Atlasta) installed their thermal system for them back in the ‘80s or did their RV. It’s just it’s cool to see that.

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