Lights On Illinois
A storm-season sales company, run by one person and its own software
About
🛠️ Type: Own product
📍 Location: Illinois, USA
🗓️ Start Date: Oct 2026
🏁 Finish Date: Oct 2026
Status
Completed
Overview
Lead site, booking and a full CRM for a solar and battery advisor, built in two days and live
In August 2026 two days of storms left about 410,000 ComEd customers in the dark. Lights On Illinois is a one-person company that helps homeowners decide what backup power they actually need — a sump pump battery, a home battery, solar with storage or a generator — and hands the install to a licensed partner.
One person cannot run a sales team, a booking service, a CRM, a newsletter and an analytics stack, and cannot afford the subscriptions either. So the software does the work of the staff: a site that explains the problem with sourced numbers and asks for one thing, a three-step Backup Power Check; a CRM that tells the owner who is waiting for a reply; and alerts that reach a phone within seconds. It went from an empty repository to the live domain in two days.
Evidence
What it looks like running
One unbroken take on a local copy with demo data: the three-step Backup Power Check filled in, the lead landing in the CRM, and its first stage change logged The live homepage: the outage problem first, every number on it with its source Backup calculator: pick what has to stay on and see how long a home battery would carry it An honest comparison that includes the competing battery-subscription model Packages with typical installed price ranges, stated as ranges and not as quotes The three-step Backup Power Check, the page's only call to action Phone layout: the call to action stays one tap away while you scroll CRM dashboard with demo data: what needs a reply now, and whether the month is on track Leads with demo data: status, score, next step and source on one screen A lead page with demo data: the call window is enforced on screen before anyone dials The whole CRM works from a phone, between calls
Engineering
How it was built
Frontend
- Next.js 16 App Router with Cache Components, React 19, Tailwind CSS v4
- Three-step form as a Server Action, validated with Zod on the server
- Backup calculator estimating runtime from the appliances that must stay on
- Phone-first layout with a fixed call-to-action bar; the CRM has its own phone tab bar
Backend & services
- Prisma 7 over libSQL: SQLite locally, Turso in production, 14 models
- Lead scoring into hot, warm and nurture from ownership, intent and outage length
- Booking with transactional slot locking and .ics invites in Central time
- Vercel cron jobs: morning digest and a National Weather Service storm watcher
Integrations
- Telegram bot: new-lead, booking and status alerts with inline status buttons
- SMTP email with an email log of every send and failure
- First-party analytics endpoint: no cookies, no IP addresses, UTM-aware funnel
Backoffice & admin
- Own CRM: dashboard with a Needs you now list, pipeline stages, follow-ups, notes timeline
- Messages inbox, review moderation, newsletter sending, blog approval
- Ledger with cost per lead by campaign, and fees owed by partners
- Morning Telegram digest of everything waiting on the owner
Compliance & privacy
- Consent record stored with every lead for TCPA evidence
- Call-window and federal-holiday rules shown on every lead
- Do-not-contact list, public opt-out page, contact-log CSV export
- CAN-SPAM newsletter: double opt-in, List-Unsubscribe, postal address
Applied
Skills on this project
Next step
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Schedule a free 30-minute strategy call with our team.
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