Business View Magazine | Volume 8, Issue 10

101 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 8, ISSUE 10 CONT INENTAL ENERGY SOLUT IONS With such experienced hands at the wheel, CES is poised to play a leading role in greening the Illinois economy. “CES’s history is deeply intertwined with that of its sister company, CECCo,” explains Haug, tracing the company’s roots. CECCo is a family-owned company founded in Chicago in 1912, just when the city was transitioning from gas-lit to electric streetlights. At the time, founder Harry Witz sold electrical fuse panels and lighting door to door. Over the years, the company grew into other sectors within the electrical vertical, including energy solutions, a division started by Haug in 2011. “Before 2011, CECCo ran separate offices for each division, but when all offices were consolidated at Oak Brook, a subsequent restructuring gave birth to CES, which was just a division back then,” recalls Haug. “At the time, we knew we wanted to get into energy solutions, but we were not sure how to approach the market, so we started with lighting retrofits and energy efficiency for CECCo’s customers. By January 2020, we had grown so much that we formed our own company, CES, and moved all our people to a dedicated space within the same building.” Today, CES offers a wide range of services, including solar arrays, battery storage, and microgrids, to assist customers in maximizing energy savings while reducing the size of their carbon footprint. The company also provides operations and maintenance services that include helping customers sell excess energy from their green energy installations to regional transmission organizations (RTO) like PJM Interconnection. “We currently have 16 employees comprising engineers, project managers, and field supervisors,” shares Haug. “We are also proud to have a NABCEP (North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners) Certified Installation Professional on staff, the gold President, Brian Haug