Solar panels, heat pumps, charging points: the work is lined up and the demand is there. The paperwork around it grows faster than the teams that have to keep up with it, though. And over the next two years that paperwork grows rather than shrinks.
Too few hands, too many forms
Anyone who wants a heat pump or a roof full of panels today is mostly waiting on people. According to the TechBarometer 2025, 67% of technical companies report a shortage of technicians, and tens of thousands of technical vacancies stand open. So every engineer and every adviser is scarce.
And still, at many of these companies a good part of the week goes on admin. Retyping quotes. Filling in subsidy forms. Processing job sheets. Chasing clients about a quote that went quiet. That is the paradox of the energy transition: the technology is there, the demand is there, and the scarce hours leak away into work that fills no roof and helps no client.
For these companies, capacity sets the revenue, not demand. Hiring more people barely works. The only dial you can turn yourself is how many hours a week disappear into the work around the work.
What is on the shelf for 2026 and 2027
That pressure is not letting up. Look at what is coming at the sector over the next eighteen months:
- Grid congestion reaches small consumers too. From 1 July 2026, small consumers in congestion areas join the waiting list for transport capacity as well. Every project now starts with the question of whether the grid can take it. Per client that means extra advice, extra coordination and an extra file.
- Net metering ends. The Dutch net metering scheme ends on 1 January 2027. For solar installers that brings a wave of questions about home batteries and energy management, mostly from their own client base. Anyone whose client history is in order takes that second round. Anyone who keeps their files in mailboxes watches it go by.
- Subsidies demand more substantiation. Schemes such as ISDE and SDE++ set ever heavier demands per application on the technical and financial substantiation. More burden of proof per file, more follow-up per client.
- The energy saving reporting obligation. Companies above the consumption threshold have to report again by 1 December 2027. For energy advisers and sustainability consultants that is an identifiable peak of file work.
Every scheme means the same thing: forms, burden of proof and follow-up. Hours from people you would rather have on the roof or with the client.
And it seeps into the figures. At the installation companies surveyed, failure costs run above 6% of turnover (ECI Solutions). Part of that is technical, and much of it is information: a site survey that was incomplete, a quote that does not match the situation on the roof, a subsidy application left sitting.
Good tools, a siloed landscape
The software on offer is not the issue. There are perfectly good trade-specific packages: for quotes and layout plans, for job sheets and engineer planning, ERP for the whole operation. The problem is the space between them.
The quoting tool does not know the site survey. The ERP does not know the subsidy file. At energy advisers it is no different: the certified calculation software does the label calculation, while the survey on location, the file, the report and the follow-up all happen around it. And three things structurally fall between two stools everywhere: subsidy, compliance and client follow-up. None of the packages handles those well, so they end up in spreadsheets, in folders in email, and in the head of whoever is busiest already.
You probably recognise the result. The same client details get entered three times. The status of an application sits nowhere. And aftercare happens when there is time left over. There rarely is.
Not yet another app, but a workspace
The reflex is to look for another tool. An extra separate app makes the landscape fuller rather than calmer, though. What does work is a workspace around your existing tools, closing the gaps between them. Concretely it looks like this:
- Speaking in the site survey. On location, the engineer or adviser speaks in what they see: roof, meter cupboard, installation spot. The system turns it into a structured file.
- Quote and subsidy check in one flow. Alongside the quote, the subsidy check with a pre-filled file sits ready as a draft straight away. No separate chore for a Friday afternoon.
- Job sheet and planning behind it. Approval of the quote means, immediately: order in the planning, job sheet ready for the engineer.
- Aftercare automatically. Handover file, maintenance moment and soon the battery question at the end of net metering: the system keeps track and sets the follow-up ready.
Notice what is not on the list: throwing out your quoting tool or ERP. They do their trade job perfectly well. The workspace connects them and fills in what is missing between them.
None of this is a distant prospect. It is existing technology, ordered around how an installation company or advisory firm actually works. AI does the groundwork, and everything that goes to the client, you see first.
The gain is in hours rather than in an impressive dashboard. Every office hour you get back is extra capacity for a sector that cannot simply buy more people.
We know the sector from the inside
Through innovation work we know the energy sector from the inside, among other things through the feasibility study within Topsector Energie that we ran for LV Energy. What a workspace like that looks like for your company is set out on the energy sector page.