About Solar Finance Simplified

I produce educational content to help individuals and businesses make financially informed decisions about solar and other energy projects.

But my story is a bit unusual. I started out with the intention of pursuing a career as a professor—teaching college students and conducting research in the field of religion and ethics. I completed my PhD at the University of Notre Dame, which has one of the best programs in the world for my field. I published seven articles in peer-reviewed academic journals and won a teaching award. But in order to continue in my academic career, I would have needed to bounce around the country to temporary positions for a number of years before landing a permanent job. I wanted to build a life and a home with my two children, so I quit and took a job in the commercial and industrial solar industry, where I worked for three years.

I applied my skills as a researcher to my new work the solar industry, spending many hours studying how solar and battery systems work. I completed a course in advanced solar and battery design, and learned how utility companies structure their tariffs, how different tariff structures impact savings, and how new solar projects impact carbon emissions in specific locations. I developed new methods for using energy interval data to calculate predicted savings from energy systems at large commercial facilities. I also spent around seven hundred hours studying the Chartered Financial Analyst curriculum (I passed the first level, but didn’t quite pass the second, if you’re familiar). This gave me an advanced understanding not only of solar, but of how to make financially-informed decisions about whether solar is a good investment. During this time, I independently analyzed more than $100 million in potential solar deals using proprietary models that I created for this purpose. About $30 million of those deals moved forward.

Over time, I found that the interdisciplinary approach I had developed for analyzing renewable energy investments was more sophisticated than what I was seeing elsewhere in the industry. In 2025, I decided to set out on my own, drawing on my experience as a teacher to create educational content for anyone interested in solar, batteries, or both, but unsure how to evaluate the financial impact of installing a system at their home, at a commercial or industrial facility, or on a larger scale. I have the ability to work with anyone who desires an independent assessment of a specific solar investment. I’m not trying to sell a solar project, so I don’t mind giving a straight answer on whether a given project is likely to be financially sound over the long term. But I can also help you understand for yourself how solar and batteries actually save you money, so that you can make an independent judgment for yourself with more confidence. If you’d like to get in touch, please drop me a line!