At 31, a Scottish civil engineer moved to Marbella, took over a small solar installer, and built it into one of Spain’s fastest-growing companies – while dozens of rivals collapsed around him.
Roman Mitchell arrived in Marbella in 2024 with a civil engineering degree and a plan to revolutionise the solar industry.
Today, at 31, he manages more than 500 installations, a workforce of over 40 people, offices on two coastlines, and a pipeline that crossed €10 million this month.
As other solar companies collapse, Mitchell is already piloting expansion to Madrid.
So what’s his secret?
‘I’m sorry but there really is no secret to our success,’ he tells Spain in English. ‘You’d be surprised how few companies turn up on time, do a good job, and don’t disappear once the panels are on the roof.’
In Spain’s residential solar market, though, that simplicity is a radical outlier.
Mitchell’s first move: the proposal
Mitchell grew up in Glasgow and studied civil engineering at the University of the West of Scotland.
When he joined Marblanc Solar in late 2024, the company’s founder and current COO, Adam Millington – a qualified electrician from Ireland – had built a reputation for quality work. But Marblanc Solar was operating almost entirely on referrals and word of mouth.
There was no formal pipeline. Annual revenue sat below €100,000.
Mitchell’s engineering instincts told him the problem wasn’t the quality of the installations – it was everything that happened before them.
Clients all along the Costa del Sol were being approached by salespeople, handed a quote, and left to figure it out.
‘Civil engineering has a lot of crossover in this market,’ he says. ‘It’s all about structures and systems.’
‘Get the system right and everything else comes by itself.’
He replaced the sales model entirely.
Instead of commission-driven salespeople, Mitchell’s master stroke was to hire trained electricians to conduct every initial site visit.
Over roughly 100 trial-and-error surveys, Mitchell designed what the company now calls the Free Solar Survey. It’s an in-person inspection by a qualified engineer, a drone survey of the roof, and – a few days later – a live proposal presentation built around a 3D model the client can adjust in real time.
Not an emailed quote 3-4 weeks late yet. Not a ballpark figure.
By May 2025, the approach had produced a 3,200% increase in proposal requests. This laid the groundwork for Mitchell’s next move.
Building a robust operation
Creating a professional solar proposal is one thing. Mitchell also needed to ensure the installation itself was managed to the same standard.
He brought in a dedicated site manager – another trained electrician – to oversee every project on the ground, from start to sign-off. It meant that every stage of the client journey had a qualified professional responsible for it.
The company now employs more than 40 people in-house and completes six or seven installations a week, booked months in advance.
Mitchell’s financial model is built around the same logic: charge what the job should cost, and reinvest the margin into the things other companies cut – software, training, qualified staff, insurance coverage and aftersales care.
‘The installers who struggled were the ones who needed new work to pay off the last job,’ he says. ‘We’re in a position to keep improving.’
Aftercare as a product
If there’s one thing Mitchell says the solar industry is lacking in Spain, it’s aftersales care.
Enter the third masterstroke.
Every Marblanc Solar client enters a two-week intensive monitoring programme after installation, during which COO Adam Millington reviews their energy data via the solar app and looks for inefficiencies.
After that, each client receives a direct WhatsApp channel to both directors and their survey engineer – open seven days a week.
The aftercare model has proven so effective that Mitchell now sells it as a standalone product – homeowners whose systems were installed by other companies are signing up for Marblanc Solar’s monitoring and support service.
But of course, if you install with Marblanc Solar, this service is free for the first three years.
‘We want to set a standard for how solar installation in Spain should be done – professionally, transparently, and with someone still on the end of the phone when something goes wrong,’ he says.
In a market where nearly one in four affected clients has been abandoned by the company that sold them a system, that standard is not a luxury.
It is what the industry should have maintained all along.
Why Roman Mitchell’s story is unique in Spain
Marblanc Solar’s growth comes after an investigation published by Cinco Días, the financial newspaper of El País, which laid bare what happened to Spain’s residential solar sector after the boom years of 2021 and 2022.
Installations jumped 108% in 2022 alone, driven by rising energy prices and a wave of government subsidies.
Companies flooded in, took on more work than their expertise allowed, and ran – in the words of José María González Moya, director general of industry association APPA Renovables – ‘con la lengua afuera’: flat out, beyond their limits.
Then the subsidies ended.
The market contracted by 50%, and dozens of installers closed, left Spain, or entered administration – taking their clients’ guarantees with them.
An audit of 10,051 organisations with active solar installations, conducted by and Tú – part of Swiss solar group Youdera – found that 57% don’t know whether their system is working properly, a further 13.2% say it isn’t delivering the savings they were promised, and 24% of those with problems have been simply abandoned by the company that installed them.
It is the backdrop that makes Roman Mitchell’s contributions to solar stand out.
The next masterstroke? Expansion
In January 2026, Marblanc Solar opened a second office in Jávea, extending its reach from the Costa del Sol to the Costa Blanca.
A pilot project in Madrid is already underway, with national expansion the stated ambition.
Mitchell has also just launched a solar cleaning service – a recurring revenue stream that keeps the company present in clients’ lives long after installation.
He is also considering whether Marblanc Solar could begin selling electricity directly, positioning the company not just as an installer but as an energy provider.
For a company that had under €100,000 in revenue eighteen months ago, the trajectory is striking.
This is a Spotlight Feature in collaboration with Marblanc Solar.
Marblanc Solar operates across the Costa del Sol and Costa Blanca. More information at marblancsolar.com.
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