Weds 9th October 2024
Faversham born Tim Clark has travelled a unique path to being a business owner. Attending a grammar school normally puts a student on a path to A-levels and university, but following his O-levels he instead decided to pursue a passion in engineering fostered by a Saturday job at a lorry yard. Thus began the first stage of his journey, becoming a marine engineer.
Starting as a deck-hand engineer, Tim was part of the crew for a number of ships until 1986 or ’87. But his career there ended quite spectacularly when his ship caught fire whilst entering Europort (Rotterdam). Feeling it was a time to change tack, Tim went to college to take an intensive electrician’s course, completing it in 9 months.
This led to work with a local company, where the theoretical knowledge gained in college was translated into practical work on building sites, in workplaces and in homes. But Tim caught a travel bug and spent some months in the US, starting in New York then moving to a very rural part of Vermont. Such isolation was not for him, though, and he returned to the UK, working amongst other places in Maidstone Prison.
Tired of subcontracting, Tim started AC Electricals in 1999, choosing the name as it would be more prominent in the Yellow Pages! AC Electricals is a real, thriving, family business which has grown in size and expanded its services to become specialists in solar energy since 2010, long before many of its competitors. A recent rebranding to Smart Energy Solutions completes the journey, for now!