It’s the family dream for each generation to surpass the last — to set a path on which your children can succeed. When Barry Moore was ready to retire from the Pennsylvania solar installation company he founded 10 years earlier, his sons Tyler and Matt stepped in to continue on the path. But even though it stayed in the family, the brothers wanted to take Moore Energy (No. 149 on the 2025 Top Solar Contractors List) in their own direction.
A small-scale utility project completed by Moore Energy.
“Since [we] came on board, we’ve been really focusing on growing and expanding the business,” said Tyler Moore, the new company co-owner alongside his brother. “We branched out into the developing space and started taking on building these small utility-scale solar farms in central Pennsylvania.”
Moore Energy, which started in 2008 as a residential and small-scale commercial contractor in the greater-Philadelphia area, averaged fewer than 500 kW of annual installations in the early years. In 2024, the company completed over 200 residential projects, 20 commercial rooftop projects and its first utility-scale solar farm, finishing the year at nearly 12 MW of installs. Moore said that entry into bigger projects was a matter of capitalizing on a moment.
In 2021, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania made a ruling in Hommrich vs. PUC that allowed for net-metering compensation. This finally gave commercial properties the chance to profit off exported solar power and also paved the way for utility-scale solar in the state.
“When the Hommrich case occurred in 2021, Matt and I as business owners decided to look in central Pennsylvania because we realized that opportunity: I can take a piece of land, throw a solar system on it, and all the energy produced is sent back to the utility and the utility is going to pay for it. I don’t need an underlying business. I don’t need a customer,” Moore said. “We ended up creating this business model around finding land, getting all the interconnection and approvals, building a solar farm that has great economics, and then we sell it to someone who wants to own the system for 30 years.”
A multi-roof installation at Quakertown Airport in Pennsylvania.
While a common practice in other states, this new business line for Moore Energy felt very novel. Moore said his accounting background and his brother Matt’s expertise in the solar installation space made the jump to larger projects easy.
“We’ve been in the commercial space for 15 years and have a very experienced installer base. We’ve done ground-mounts in our commercial realm of work, so doing that at a larger scale [hasn’t changed],” he said. “The real learning curve has come in working with land development, working with townships, having an 18-month process to go through.”
While the door to utility-scale development in Pennsylvania is now wide open, Moore said the Hommrich decision has kept the company busy in the commercial rooftop market too.
“You have business owners who are entrepreneurs, and they’re looking for ways to make money and save money. Now all of sudden you have the opportunity to turn your roof into a revenue stream. It’s been able to change the way we’re having conversations with business owners,” he said. “It is a very large factor in why we’ve experienced such growth in the commercial side of the business in the past four years.”
And continued growth is the plan for Moore Energy.
“We’re hoping to continue to grow in what we call the small-scale utility space. A lot of that is currently hinged on the legislation that’s batted around by Congress, so we’re hoping for a friendly outcome,” Moore said. “We’re going to continue on the same trajectory of offering [solar in all markets]. Anything solar that you need, we can provide it.”
This story was featured exclusively in our 2025 Top Solar Contractors issue. See the issue and full list of top U.S. solar installers here.