Fortified Solar Taps Into Growing Industry With Steel Solar Panels

The path from superheroes to solar energy might seem an unlikely one, but Justin Draplin, Fortified Solar founder and CEO, is an idea man with a long history of trying new things.

He founded Fortified Solar, which produces building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) panels, six years ago, after enjoying success with a custom superhero cape business, tiny home community, digital signage company, and an events business. Draplin jokingly credits his ability to create such a disparate array of businesses to ADHD.

The common thread among his many enterprises is less visible to outsiders, but it does tie all of those businesses together, Draplin said.

“I’ve been blessed with ADD, which allows me to connect dots to a vast number of things relatively quickly,” he said. “The line from having a superhero cape manufacturing company – well, I had to move that into something, so I found real estate to move it into,” which led into the tiny home community.

While all of the companies have done well, with Fortified Solar, Draplin tapped into an industry that has become a hot commodity as businesses and individuals look for ways to become more energy-efficient.

Fortified Solar ranked No. 2 in this year’s 50 Fastest Growing Companies in South Carolina recognition.

The company’s BIPV products are steel solar roofs, which are mainly sold to commercial and industrial clients looking to offset their energy consumption.

Fortified Solar was founded “to create more clean energy that is usable on the grid,” Draplin said. Clients also receive tax credits from the federal government for using solar energy, which has benefited companies that produce solar products.

The company has been around since 2020, and with the increased interest in renewable energy in recent years, the upward trajectory isn’t terribly surprising.

The idea for Fortified Solar grew out of Draplin’s work in developing a tiny home community in Travelers Rest.

“This started with the intent of focusing on sustainable living, and I wanted to build a tiny home that was fully self-sustaining. … So you could put a home anywhere, and it just worked,” Draplin said.

As he worked on making the tiny homes self-sustaining, Draplin realized that solar energy could be an important part of the equation.

Tiny homes can be difficult to finance, “so we actually developed a financing structure that involved tax credits and depreciation, which is carried on to today. The big key for us was when the Inflation Reduction Act was passed (in 2022), we switched from tiny homes to doing all solar. And so we focused on the roofing product we had developed.”

Draplin essentially taught himself how to build the solar panels, and the learning curve was “significant. There’s a lot of stuff that we do that probably could have been short-cut if we had the people and the knowledge in-house already. But at the time, it was just me. So I had to go out and find the knowledge, find the people to do what I was setting out to do.”

One of the biggest differences between traditional solar products and Fortified Solar’s products is that traditional solar panels are made of glass, while Fortified Solar’s steel panels can be integrated into the structure of the building.

Steel panels are more durable and less subject to damage from weather-related issues such as hail.

“The reality is, the consumption of energy is going up significantly, specifically electricity. Whether that’s more electric cars or data centers or bitcoin mining,” he said. “Whatever it is, electricity is being used more and more in our daily lives, and that demand is going through the roof. Any sources of electricity generation are going to be doing well for the foreseeable future, just because the demand is so high.”

Fortified Solar has about 40 employees, but Draplin expects to hire 30 to 40 more people by the end of the year as the company adds more products to its line.

“This facility, fully operational, should have about 150 employees,” he said.

And Draplin said he hopes to take the company public eventually.

“We are working on new products, new structures. We do a lot within the self-storage space currently, but we will be doing more within the commercial industrial. We have some hotels we are working with, and we also have some residential-type products that we’ll be rolling out. As a company, we plan to continue to grow, to continue to scale up the amount of energy we can manufacture.”