What evaluation criteria should I use to compare clean energy proposals?

A clear evaluation framework prevents bias and ensures your team assesses all proposals consistently. Your criteria should reflect your true priorities—whether you're optimizing for lowest cost, fastest execution, best long-term performance, or a balance of factors.

Core Evaluation Categories

• Financial — Total project cost, levelized cost of energy ($/kWh), energy offset percentage, projected savings over project life, and financing terms if the provider offers them.

• Technical — System size and projected performance (kWh/year), equipment quality and warranties, design efficiency for your site, and conformance to your technical specifications.

• Provider qualifications — Experience with similar projects, track record of on-time/on-budget delivery, financial stability, insurance and bonding, and local expertise.

• Project delivery — Timeline and milestones, permitting support, construction plan, operational handover documentation, and warranty/service support.

• Risk — Currency risk (if pricing in foreign currency), contract terms, performance guarantees, and service continuity (what if the provider goes out of business?).

Creating a Scoring Matrix

Assign weights to each category based on your priorities. For a price-sensitive project, financial metrics might be 50% of the score, while technology might be 20% and provider qualifications 30%. For a mission-critical system, you might weight provider qualifications and technical approach more heavily even if cost is higher.

Assign point values within each category (typically 1–10 scale) and document the rubric in advance. For example: "Financial: 9–10 points if cost is lowest; 7–8 points if within 5% of lowest; 5–6 points if 5–10% higher; below 5 if cost exceeds baseline by more than 10%." Apply this rubric consistently to all proposals.

Avoiding Common Mistakes

Don't let lowest price automatically win if other criteria matter. Many organizations weight cost at 50% but then select the lowest-cost bidder anyway, making other criteria meaningless. Apply your weighting honestly.

Distinguish between nice-to-have and must-have criteria. If 24/7 monitoring is essential, it should be a compliance criterion (pass/fail), not a scoring criterion. Only marginal differences between qualified providers should be decided by scoring.

Transparency and Documentation

Share your evaluation criteria in the RFP itself so providers understand how you'll judge their proposals. This encourages better-aligned submissions and demonstrates fairness to stakeholders. Document your scoring for each proposal and explain why you selected the winning provider—this supports your internal decision-making and protects you if selection is questioned.