National Energy Control (NEC) (No. 258 on the 2026 Top Solar Contractors List), of Cincinnati, Ohio, is developing a solar project for a New Jersey school district, and winning the contract involved a series of travel obstacles like those in the 1987 film Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
Credit: National Energy Control
In early January, VP of business development Zachary Monhollen stayed past working hours to search for requests for proposals (RFPs) for solar projects. He was scrolling through Google search results, and “I don’t remember what page I was on, probably the fourth or fifth, when I found this RFP,” he said.
East Orange School District in East Orange, New Jersey, issued an RFP for new roofing work, EV chargers for an electric bus fleet and solar on its school buildings. Monhollen shared the RFP document with sales director Josh Davis, and the two pored over its more than 800 pages.
“Typically, we just do solar. It caught our attention because of the roof bid and the EV chargers,” Davis said.
NEC audits whole buildings to provide other energy services, such as lighting, roofing and HVAC.
The next day, they booked flights to New Jersey for a pre-bid meeting happening there the following week. When the date came, Monhollen and Davis arrived in East Orange to walk through and atop the 21 school buildings the district hoped to outfit with solar, EV charging and new roof repairs.
“You don’t know what you’re getting into until you walk the sites,” Monhollen said. “What’s the real scope? Is there a local company that helped them write the RFP? You get the lay of the land when you go up there. That was the first step of the process.”
All the while, a snowstorm was looming. Davis caught an early flight out on that Friday. Monhollen was scheduled to leave that Saturday, but 1 ft of snow fell just in that day, so he was stuck in New Jersey until Tuesday.
Once he returned to Cincinnati, Monhollen and Davis drafted a bid for East Orange Schools’ RFP. Since NEC is a developer, that process involved interviewing and vetting contractors for the roofing, electrical, EV and solar portions of the project, as well as arranging a financier.
Monhollen had found the RFP later than usual in the process, so they were working with a shortened timeline. The bid was due on Thursday, Jan. 26, and they didn’t get financing details back until Monday, Jan. 23. Altogether, the bid document NEC compiled was 138 pages.
“This was really all that me and Josh worked on from the middle of January until the bid was due,” Monhollen said.
They managed to complete the bid package, which included a cashier’s check, with two days to spare. It was sent with overnight shipping on Tuesday of that week with the expectation that the school board would have it on Wednesday.
But another snowstorm was approaching and another foot of snow fell in New Jersey as NEC’s bid was on its way to the school district. Davis and Monhollen were tracking the package, and it had stopped moving. They called the school district to see if an extension was possible.
“They told us if we don’t have the bid package to them in hand by noon on Thursday, we weren’t eligible,” Monhollen said.
There was a chance that the bid package might make it, he said, but they didn’t want to risk missing this opportunity. The snowstorm subsided, so they reprinted everything and cut a new check. Monhollen caught a 6 a.m. flight that Thursday and drove directly to East Orange School District from the airport. He waited at the school and delivered the package directly to the board of education.
Monhollen spent several more hours in a meeting room, going page-by-page through bid packages with the board of education. A couple days later, the board recommended NEC’s project proposal. After two snowstorms, a red-eye flight and a breakneck bid drafting process, NEC won the project.
The school district held a groundbreaking ceremony on June 15. Since January, the project scope has increased, with the total planned solar output now 5.85 MW. But Monhollen said the difficult part is finished.
“Getting a signed resolution is one thing. Getting all the engineering done and getting the financing, and legal team and funding out of the PPA — getting all those boxes checked. It’s a big sense of relief,” Monhollen said. “Construction’s construction. That’s going to be the part of the process that we know and understand very well.”
This story was featured exclusively in our 2026 Top Solar Contractors issue. See the issue and full list of top U.S. solar installers here.