This Week in Solar

What’s new:

According to a new report released by Grid Strategies on Tuesday, U.S. utilities now project that we’ll need 166 GW of extra peak demand by 2030, with roughly 90 GW (more than 54% ) tied to data centers. That’s a sixfold jump from energy forecasts made in 2022, meaning that we now need six times the energy we thought we would before generative AI hit the scene.

Why it matters:

Utilities are leaning on these aggressive load projections to greenlight huge spends on new power plants and grid upgrades nationwide.

Those projections are already hitting people’s wallets, and it’s only going to get worse.

In PJM’s region (the nation’s largest power market serving 67+ million people), capacity costs jumped from just $2.2B in 2023 up to $14.7B in 2024 and $16.1B in last summer’s auction, fueling anger in hard-hit states and helping candidates who promised lower bills win November’s elections in New Jersey and Virginia.

To meet the surge, many utilities are planning gigawatts of new gas-fired generation, which could raise costs even further, slow the shift to cleaner power, and add more pollution.

In Virginia, now the world’s largest data center hub, Dominion Energy is proposing multiple gigawatts of new gas.

Dominion says the plants are needed to meet demand, but critics point out that adding new gas would likely make it impossible for Virginia to meet their Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard goals, which are supposed to phase out fossil fuels in the state entirely by 2045.

In Georgia, Georgia Power is asking regulators to approve gigawatts of gas to meet load forecasts. But voters in November flipped two Public Service Commission seats to challengers who campaigned on reining in utility spending.

Texas, which is second only to Virginia for data centers, has seen forecasts nearly quadruple in a year. A new state law now requires new data centers to disconnect during peak grid stress. Regulators are still finalizing how that will work.

What’s true is that we need more power and we need it fast. Solar is the fastest way to add new power right now, and the best match for meeting this surging data-center demand.

Tesla Recalls 10,500 Powerwalls

What’s new:

According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Tesla is recalling about 10,500 Powerwall 2 Battery Power Systems in the U.S. after reports of overheating, smoke, and a handful of fires that caused minor property damage. The CPSC warns that the defect presents fire and burn hazards and a risk of serious injury or death.

Why it matters:

The recall, initiated on Nov. 13, cites a third-party lithium-ion cell defect that can cause units to fail and overheat during normal use. Thankfully, no injuries have been reported.

Affected units were sold nationwide via Tesla and certified installers from November 2020 through December 2022. Tesla says Powerwall 3 is not affected. Disabled units will be replaced at no cost.

Backup power will be unavailable to battery owners until replacements are installed, though rooftop solar generation can continue if customers have solar paired with storage.

Sources:

Data-center power forecasts climb to unreachable heights

Load Growth Forecast Reports

Tesla recalls over 10,000 batteries nationwide for risk of burn, injury or death

Tesla recalls 10,500 Powerwall 2 battery systems in US over fire risk

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit exactsolar.substack.com

Aaron Nichols talks with Exact Solar’s own Dave Hammes, a 20-year clean-energy veteran who specializes in helping non-profit organizations go solar.

Dave shares how learning about the true cause of 9/11 sparked his pivot into renewables.

He outlines his path from Solar Energy International training through launching a premium solar panel brand in the Americas, developing solar water-pumping projects across West Africa, and bringing that experience home to help municipalities and nonprofits go solar.

You can connect with Dave on LinkedIn here.

Expect to Learn:

* How a non-linear career path built Dave’s toolkit for getting complex projects across the finish line.

* What boards of churches, schools, and towns actually need to green-light solar.

* Why tax-exempt organizations interested in solar need to act now as policies and incentives start to shift.

Quotes from the Episode:

“Technically, solar doesn’t generate electricity—the sun does. We’re just smart about how we use it.”– Dave Hammes

“In a lot of these organizations, energy represents over a third of their expenses. That’s a big percentage. You’re passing the basket a few times now just to raise your energy bill every month.” – Dave Hammes

Transcript:

Aaron Nichols: Hello everyone and welcome back to This Week in Solar. I’m Aaron Nichols, the Research and Policy Specialist here at Exact Solar in Newtown, Pennsylvania. Today we have a very special guest who I’ve been after for a few months to do the show. And you’d think I’d be able to get him easily because he’s within my own organization, but it took some doing. Dave Hammes basically stumbled into the solar world like I did. And Dave, I would love to hear you outline that journey for a little bit before we get started.

Dave Hammes: Yeah, I’d be glad to, and I hope I don’t bore anyone. But yes, I was motivated very early on. Actually, it was after 9-11. I was curious about that and what caused that whole disaster. And when I started digging into it, I found that a lot of it was driven by—oddly enough—about oil. And to a degree on that, some have been Laden and George W. Bush. And I thought, wow, I want to dig deep into this, and that is thinking, okay, well, how do you avert such things going forward? And it was such an emotional impact that that had everyone at the time. But I started paying attention to studying energy, energy efficiency, renewables. And I just became really intrigued with it. So I was self-taught for a few years early on, ended up going to Solar Energy International, one of the oldest training facilities for solar energy out in Colorado and went through their program. And people started learning that I knew about solar and they’d ask me to design a system for them and I would, and then all of a sudden they asked me to install it and I found I was in the solar business. And then someone else found me—an organization, a big conglomerate out of Germany—that one of their arms of their conglomerate was making solar panels, a premium panel, and they called and they said they were going to launch a facility here in the U.S. Would I want to join them? So I did. I was like the second person in the organization in the Americas. And I ended up running that organization for, I guess, about five years or more. And I had a lot of salespeople across the country, sales managers. And we grew it from nothing to like $100 million in solar panels, sales to all the solar installation companies across the Americas. And I eventually ended up going to work for a software company, one of the earliest ones in the industry that designed software, and one of our big clients was Sun Addison, which was probably the largest installation network at the time, a huge organization. And later I went to work with a company that used solar energy to pump and purify water. And they happened to do business all over the globe. So I was like one month with them, and I got the conversation—I was called into the office of the president. And he said, you’re going to Africa. I can do that. He said, do you know how to speak French? And I said, “ooh,” that was about it. That wasn’t sure how many words that was. So I did that. I started traveling over there—half a dozen trips over there—and developing projects in a few of the West African countries, which was quite exciting and eye-opening to say the least. Eventually, the pandemic hit and I couldn’t travel anymore. So I came back here. I took off for a little while because of the pandemic and I wasn’t going anywhere, but later joined up with Exact Solar, which happened to be one of the customers of mine when we were selling solar panels for the German manufacturer. So that’s it, and that’s how I got here, and gravitating towards commercial projects and the like. And I had a lot of experience with government-related projects, especially in Africa, where I was dealing with the highest level of parliamentary government, and I just felt really comfortable in pursuing that here. So I work with a number of municipalities and work on developing business in that regard. And the nonprofits is just an area that everyone stays away from, as well as a lot of government types of projects—people don’t chase after those because they take longer to develop, they’re tougher to develop, tougher to get across the finish line. And it’s not because I enjoyed that so much, but it is because fewer people do it. And I know, you know, the ins and outs of it a little bit—perhaps more than some do—just from experience, and failing often enough, you learn a lot.

Aaron Nichols: But yeah, and I want to touch on something that I think is so important. I mean, I’ve been really hammering on this on every podcast I’ve been interviewed on. In the solar industry, it’s so important to me to highlight the stories of people who didn’t follow a linear path, because I also didn’t follow a linear path.I work in solar because I was surfing in a town in Ecuador and I met two circus girls who invited me to sell solar with them door-to-door. And it’s so important to me that, you know, if you’re someone who’s listening to this and you might be intimidated by the business world or you want to break into clean energy, just start talking to people, because if it seems intimidating from the outside, the reality of the inside is, you know, things are just happening.

Dave Hammes: That reminds me of an aside I just shared with someone recently—one of our colleagues, actually. When I started developing these projects on my own very early on, a homeowner would find out about it and have me design a system, or a real small business or whatever, and I would do that. And then I was working with a friend of mine because he was intrigued by it and we were doing things together.And he got a hold of a request for proposal from USAID and he shared it with me. And I read this, and USAID was responsible for trying to put together the nation of, like, Burya in West Africa after their civil war—disaster—and USAID could not get it put together, so they’re reaching out for input and so forth. And their RFP was to create an energy solution for the entire country because it was destroyed—all the grid ties and everything was destroyed through the civil war. People were taking the wires off the poles and everything else. I thought, well, why not? I’ve done two homes and a small orchard business. So I’m capable of this—why not the entire country of Liberia? Exactly. So I took it on, and I met this gentleman—like you’re saying, you know, just in a conversation—who actually escaped the civil war, came over here to live with his daughter. And he happened to be in charge of the entire cellular infrastructure for the country, and he knew every square inch of the country, the terrain, and everything.So he and I worked together, I created this plan. He knew which industries were the strongest over there and what the biggest problems were. There’s like 85% unemployment—just a disaster. So the crime rate was so high, everyone was trying to survive. So I put together this plan and submitted it at the last minute to USAID. I did not win the bid for it, but I found out about maybe four or six months later that the energy company that had been in place over there was already awarded it before the RFP came out. So it was just like, you know, I don’t know what you call it—it’s like you had to send out an RFP by law or something, right? But then I read their solution and found out that they were burning old rubber trees that weren’t producing anymore. That was their clean energy plan for sustainability—plus whatever other fuels they had available to them. But they also apparently found three or four items within my proposal that they borrowed for doing energy along the coast because they could produce wind energy there and use that for freezers and refrigeration of their fishing industry, because they had none before that. So the industry could triple—things like that. But nonetheless, I just thought it was an interesting experience and you learn a lot doing business over there and so forth.

Aaron Nichols: Okay, so for anyone who’s listening who doesn’t know industry acronyms, RFP is a request for proposal.

Dave Hammes: Yeah. Thank you—I jumped through that. But yeah, it’s so cool that I’ve had that impact and have been able to carry that home and try to bring the same thing back to the U.S.

Aaron Nichols: And I’m curious: as you’ve worked with some of these nonprofits and municipal organizations, what are some of the major benefits of solar that a lot of these organizations see once they actually get those projects across the finish line?

Dave Hammes: Well, I can speak to the religious organizations—and there’s quite a few that I’ve been working with. I think I have at least a half dozen so far this year alone, just since the springtime, and there’s more on the horizon. But they have a real tenet—you know, their equivalent of bylaws in their organizations call for environmental stewardship and giving back to the earth. And for all the right reasons, they want to do clean energy projects. You can ask just about any organization of that type if they would like to go solar and the answer is yes. Historically, they’ve been prevented from doing so because it’s cost-prohibitive for the initial outlay of cash. That makes one of the biggest hurdles. So now we have some solutions, and especially with Exact Solar working on some very unique solutions that can overcome those hurdles. And it certainly helps with the Inflation Reduction Act, which is going by the wayside more or less now with our current administration. But that enabled these communities to go solar in their places of worship and save tons of money. So they benefit significantly from the financial side as well as doing what’s right at the same time—for their community, for safety, for resilience. All those things are boxes they need to check.

Aaron Nichols: So they have to justify upfront cost, but generally see quite a bit of savings on the back end.

Dave Hammes: Absolutely, yes.

Aaron Nichols: And then, other than costs—when you’re speaking to the boards of these organizations—what else are they usually concerned about, and what other worries do you have to alleviate?

Dave Hammes: Well, with a religious organization, they have multiple tiers. You have perhaps a small committee that embraces and wants to champion the efforts to go with clean energy. And then, if they are successful and collaborate and speak to people like myself, they can take it to the next step, which may be a bigger committee and eventually to the church council. And then that goes on to the congregation. And everyone has to have the majority buy-in in order to make anything happen, plus they need some way of funding the project—whether it’s fundraising, or they have the capital, or they’re depending on us to have a solution, which fortunately we’re able to do.

Aaron Nichols: Right. And after they’ve gone solar, what do you mainly hear from these organizations when you’re checking back in with people?

Dave Hammes: Oh boy. Well, they’re certainly pleased that they did it. I think the way that it’s vindicated, if nothing else, is the fact that one house of worship will share that experience with another. And then I get a call from them. And that’s how I got up to six or seven so far this year—by that exact thing happening. You know, someone may call in and I’ll pursue it and they’ll tell their friends in another congregation and it just—word of mouth. So that definitely takes place. Yeah, generally they’re excited.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah. I think this is one of the obstacles of solar I’ve been joking about with a lot of people: it’s too good at what it does. It’s just kind of boring. It just sits there and makes power. And once it’s turned on, you forget it’s there because it’s so good at what it’s doing.

Dave Hammes: Well, yeah, that’s a good point. And I’d like to touch on that a little bit because technically, solar—as we know it, what we think about when you use that term, for better or worse—does not generate any electricity whatsoever. All the energy is the sun. And the sun’s energy is used in every way you can think—every single living thing on the planet, all our food, everything—heat, light, you name it. It comes from the sun, and it allows us, because of technology, to power the things that we want to power. And there are some people now that don’t want that to happen. They do not want some people to have access to the sun. And to me, I don’t understand it—it’s ridiculous. It’s free energy. It’s fuel. And yeah, there’s a cost for the hunks of metal and glass that we put on top of a building to channel that energy so that it runs a motor or your refrigerator or your internet or your TV or all of the above. But for those who want to stop the sunshine from being able to give us the living styles that we have—that’s just unbelievable. I don’t know that thought process. The alternative makes it even worse. So I was joking with somebody recently—I borrowed a line from a big long-term advocacy group, The Third Act. If you go in and have a conversation with one of these organizations, you get a checklist—two boxes: you can get your energy from heaven, or you can get your energy from below. And the one from heaven has the least cost, is the fastest to put in place, and the longest term of any—and it’s the healthiest, safest. But let’s not do that—some people don’t want to do that.

Aaron Nichols: Right, I mean, well, there’s an entire infrastructure built around just digging things up and burning them and then going to find more things to dig up and burn.

Dave Hammes: Yeah, that’s true. Poisonous water and poisonous air and everything else. If you get the stats that the government supplies us with—the stats on how many people die in the U.S. each year from particulate matter from burning fossil fuel, or from poisonous water, right. And it’s incredible. It’s like a small city every year, you know?

Aaron Nichols: Yeah, and this is one thing that I’m very fired up about because I’m a very contrarian person. And so whoever’s in power, I disagree with, generally. But I’m very excited at the idea that harvesting the sun’s rays is now an act of revolution—that just gets me fired up—because I love the idea that, you know, this thing that just shines on the Earth all day, and all that energy, and we found a new way to use it and it’s even better and more efficient than any way we’ve generated the electricity we need before—and now they don’t want us to use it.

Dave Hammes: Right—yeah, it’s coming off the sun. Let me talk about the ultimate power—how do you do that? It’s like, oh, that’d be pretty neat. If I can control the sun, why didn’t I think of that? Yeah, it’s crazy.

Aaron Nichols: One of the projects I’ve been most excited about since I’ve worked here at Exact Solar is our Habitat for Humanity project. And I’m interested to hear you talk about maybe challenges we faced there, how we overcame them, the benefits of that project, how that’s going to impact the people in those homes. I would love to hear you speak on it.

Dave Hammes: Yeah, sure. That is one of my favorite projects, if you will. So the gentleman from Habitat—Philly Habitat; Berks/Lehigh/Norristown from the Philly division—saw one of our highway billboards and started tracking us down and ended up going through Solarize to get to us. And I certainly looked at their project. They had five new homes that they were providing for some families in need, and they were building these super-efficient homes and solar was gonna top it off, which made a whole lot of sense. So they’re in the city, and there are certain restrictions there and certain guidelines we had to follow, but we designed the system. We designed the components; the equipment itself had to be special equipment for the project in order to abide by the restrictions that the city has or the guidelines that they have. And we did so. We adjusted the systems appropriately and we launched it and had a nice little press release at the location. And doing the math for that presentation, we found out that by doing so, they were saving those people over $40,000 in energy costs—simply by putting these solar arrays on their homes—for people that couldn’t afford the homes otherwise. Right now, it just lowered their cost to live there, and they’ll end up as homeowners and solar system owners in the not too distant future. So that’s a very rewarding success story. Kudos to Habitat for sure and that ongoing effort—that’s quite noble, I believe.

Aaron Nichols: And that’s one of the things I love most about those kinds of stories—especially when you talk about schools, houses of worship, or organizations like Habitat for Humanity. You have people who are wasting money on ever-increasing electricity prices, and nonprofits have very strict budgets. And when you can help them free up more money, that goes toward doing more good in the community.

Dave Hammes: That’s the intent. Yes, that’s the truth. Yeah, that’s definitely true. Yeah, that’s part of the conversations that we have. One of the plants is a Ukrainian church, and I brought an idea to the table that the money that they would save from going solar could be put into a fund that could be contributed to their homeland. And they’ve loved that idea. So there are things that they’d rather do with their money than spend it on energy. As you said, Aaron, the prices keep going up and up on fossil fuels. And that doesn’t have to be the case. Yeah, so it’s good to see those success stories, for sure.

Aaron Nichols: So what advice do you have for any tax-exempt organizations that are thinking about solar now? What do they need to do?

Dave Hammes: They need to act immediately. Right now. The winds change weekly. I mean two weeks ago, we were that close to a new executive order that’s going to change the world again in this world. And the people that want to wait and see are the ones that are going to lose out, and the people that take action now are the ones that are going to be like saying, “Wow, I can breathe,” you know. In a lot of these organizations, the energy represents over a third of their expenses. That’s huge. That’s a big percentage. And if you’re paying 35% of whatever, you’re passing the basket a few times now just to raise your energy bill every month. And it’s not an endless supply of money to keep these organizations running.

Aaron Nichols: And when we talk about organizations like Habitat for Humanity, you’re also talking about families that are on very limited budgets who then now have just a little bit more money to get through the end of the month and aren’t choosing between electricity and food. That’s true. The news article that’s coming out this Friday—I mean, this is probably gonna come out in a month—but the one I wrote that’s coming out this Friday is a deep dive on the cancellation of Solar for All, and a couple stories like the New York Times talking about this woman in Georgia who was paying $500 a month. She’s a single mom of three. She works two jobs just to support herself, and Solar for All was supposed to give them a solar energy system and take that cost off the table, and that just got yanked out from under them.

Dave Hammes: Yeah, it’s, again, one of those things. It’s difficult for me to process the mentality behind that because there’s been a lot of things in the news about how devastating the changes to these incentives have been for our industry. There are hundreds of thousands of people in this industry and losing jobs and companies going out of business and so forth. And I think beyond that—I mean that is a bad thing; there’s no question about it, and I’m part of that industry—but from our experience in the last three years and up until a week ago, for every dollar someone spends, they’re going to get two, three, or four dollars back from going solar—in savings or in incentives in some cases. The IRA had $369 billion assigned to energy, dedicated to energy, and I don’t know how much—it’s hard to find out how much—has been gone through. But if it was only half of that (I think it’s a lot more), that represents like $500 billion back to those people—coming back to the American people and the public. Forget about the solar industry employees or whatever—not that we want to—but I’m just saying, put that aside for a moment and look at where the real devastation is. You just took a half a trillion dollars away from the American people with that one move. And it keeps on happening. So I don’t understand that mentality or the people that are behind it, because they’re hurting themselves.

Aaron Nichols: And I do think the one thing the solar industry is very bad at—and this is something that I go back and forth with my friends who work with other companies all the time—is we’re not good at relating the human impact of things like this. It’s a very technical-minded industry of people who love numbers and graphs.But when you zoom in on the story of a single mother of three who could have freed up a third of her monthly costs and, you know, just gotten some nicer things and felt a little more dignity—and then had that sense of hope pulled away from her—yeah, that’s the kind of stuff that I think it’s important we focus on.

Dave Hammes: Yeah, you’re right. And there’s the argument of climate change. I feel in a similar fashion: you’re going to argue with somebody that disagrees with you all day long for years—and it’s been going on for decades—arguing, is it climate change from what we do or not, blah blah? Well, put that aside and look at what you just mentioned. And what I just mentioned a second ago: if you invest in clean energy because of such a low cost, at worst—even without any incentive whatsoever—you’re going to cut your bill in half. And all the things that come with that in cleaning up the community. For these schools that go solar—you know, schools and places of worship—they are community centers in a disaster, in a flood, or whatever the event may be, storm or what have you. And that makes it much more resilient. And it also separates from centralized energy—having one big generation plant somewhere—into distributed energy, which removes the possibility of as many cyberattacks and things like that if you can separate yourself from the grid. The grid gets hacked a few times a day.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah, it’s been very sad to watch the administration try to tie clean energy to identity politics and use that and try to tell people that clean energy is just some sort of lefty comedy thing. It’s not. It’s here. It’s going to be the future in 20 years. This is a minor setback, but in 20–30 years these kinds of conversations are going to seem silly.

Dave Hammes: Yeah. But I know my children, my grandchildren, and beyond—they cannot imagine what a group of people are doing to their future. They can’t comprehend why somebody would knowingly and deliberately do that so that they’re going to have to pay for it in terms of health and price and everything else. You can’t fathom that.

Aaron Nichols: That’s a really good place to ask my last question, which I ask everyone who comes on the show. And I wrote this because I went to my grandma’s birthday party a few months ago—she was turning 80 years old. As I was sitting there, I was thinking about the timeline of clean energy and how she was born into a world that had just been electrified. The Rural Electrification Act had happened 10 years before she was born; she was born in rural Missouri. The first PV cell was 1954, so she was nine, and then Jimmy Carter put panels on the White House in ’79—and those were solar thermal; they weren’t even solar PV cells. And then everything that’s happened since the turn of the century with PV being at this ridiculously high cost per watt going all the way down to where it is now and being so economically viable—all of that has happened within her lifetime, coming from a world where what we conceive of as clean energy didn’t even exist. And so, if you just want to spitball just for fun: what do you think clean energy looks like in 80 years? And don’t worry—we’ll both be dead. No one’s going to hold us to the answer.

Dave Hammes: Yeah, that is true about it. But let’s see—how do I answer that? I would say a few things. One is, when I first started this—I gave you a brief background and my intrigue with the industry and the whole topic—I voiced the fact that I wanted to live to the point where fossil fuel would be the “alternative energy.” Clean, renewable energy—wind, solar, whatever—were considered alternative energies and called that back in the day; they still are. But I wanted to get to a point where they would supersede the fossil fuels, and fossil fuels are second and in place or beyond. And that actually happens—everyone that’s gone solar. I have natural-gas backup, but I don’t use it. I have solar on my house. I have heat pumps, you know—heating things and whatever. And I have an electric car—it’s so nice. So where will we be in 80 years? I don’t think the technologies that’ll exist then can even be imagined today because there’s this exponential development growth and what have you. There will be so many technologies that I can’t imagine today that will come and go. I think, one, there’s going to be some intelligence put behind building materials that doesn’t exist today, and those building materials are going to be much more efficient—and much more efficient ways of building things—and therefore a lot more efficiency in keeping them running as far as electricity is concerned. So you’ll have two things working in the same direction: just more intelligent products and building practices and less need for that energy. And, short-term, there’s great promise in solid-oxide fuel cells and these mini reactors that are in the news these days. A mini reactor—I love the concept; I just don’t think, in my backyard, they’re going to be… they’re not pet-friendly yet. I think those types of things may come and go, but the advancement is going to be—there’s going to be a constant need for energy, so there’s going to be a constant need to improve the technologies, the ideas, and where that comes from. And I think solar is playing a big part; it will be a big part. I heard something that Ron said when you were speaking with him—that it’s not going to be in the same form it is now. And I agree with that; there’ll be a whole lot of different approaches to solar energy that won’t be the same as what we’re doing right now. But it certainly is going to make up a significant part of our overall energy supply. And the rest of the world sees that in places like China that has passed us by in advanced technology. It’s interesting. But yeah, it’ll play a thing.

Aaron Nichols: I’m certainly excited to toss little uranium pellets into my backyard reactor. That’s going to be a fun day when that gets here.

Dave Hammes: Your new pellet stove.

Aaron Nichols: Well, thanks so much for coming on, Dave. For everyone listening, that’s been This Week in Solar. And—yeah.

Dave Hammes: Thank you very much.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit exactsolar.substack.com

What’s new

Qcells is temporarily furloughing approximately 1,000 workers and reducing hours and pay at its Dalton and Cartersville, Georgia, factories due to repeated detentions of imported solar cells and other components by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Why it matters

Qcells has committed $2.5 billion to build a U.S. solar supply chain and is ramping American cell manufacturing, including a $2.3 billion Cartersville plant to make ingots, wafers, and cells (key components of solar panels). As of now, they import the cells from overseas factories and assemble them in the U.S.

Solar cells are ultra-thin slices of purified silicon that turn sunlight into electricity. Dozens of cells are wired together to make a solar panel. If you don’t have cells, you can’t make solar panels.

Qcells says some detained shipments have been released, but delays forced them to scale back production. The company expects to resume full production soon, and says furloughed employees will keep full benefits.

Reports say Qcells cells began being detained in June, under enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. Qcells maintains that none of its materials come from China or Xinjiang.

South Korea Mandates Solar on Parking Lots

What’s new

South Korea became the latest country to mandate solar on parking lots. Starting Nov. 28, 2025, all public parking lots in the country larger than 1,000 square meters must add solar.

Why it matters

Parking lot solar is a win-win for everyone. It makes use of space that’s already paved and cannot be used for anything else, adds shade and weather cover for cars, and means that farmland and more natural spaces don’t need to be used to generate electricity with solar.

France passed a similar law earlier this year, requiring solar on all lots larger than 1500 square meters. Hopefully, the U.S. starts to follow suit. We have 2 billion parking spaces, which take up as much space as the entire country of Belgium. Covering a small fraction of that total in solar panels could make a dramatic difference in our power needs and improve the quality of life for millions of people.

Nextracker is Now Nextpower

What’s new

Nextracker, a publicly traded company that started as a tracker manufacturer (the racks on big utility-scale solar installations that follow the sun across the sky), is rebranding to Nextpower and shifting to a full, integrated energy tech platform.

Why it matters

Power demand is surging from AI/data centers, EVs, and building electrification. Solar can add the most new capacity fastest and at the lowest cost, but the new administration wants to see localized supply chains throughout the solar industry.

Nextpower aims to ease this headache for developers and be a one-stop provider of utility-scale solar from steel to software.

Sources

South Korean solar firm cuts pay and hours for Georgia workers as US officials detain imports - CBS Atlanta

Qcells furloughs 1,000 workers at US solar factories due to stalled shipments | Reuters

South Korea mandates solar systems at public parking lots from late November

Who Are The Winners in Parking Lot Solar Power?

Solar tracker giant Nextracker rebrands as Nextpower

Nextracker Rebrands as Nextpower to Reflect the Company’s Position as an Integrated Power Technology Innovator

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Aaron Nichols talks with Jim Gregory and Justin Mason of the Conservative Energy Network (CEN).

Jim is a former Pennsylvania state representative and now serves as the Executive Director of the Conservative Energy Network.

Justin is a grassroots organizer who started installing solar on rooftops and is now the Director of Programs and Operations of the Conservative Energy Network in Pennsylvania.

You can find them on LinkedIn here:

* Jim Gregory

* Justin Mason

In this interview, they dig into the ways clean energy helps uphold conservative values (property rights, jobs, national security) and how CEN helped save net metering in Pennsylvania.

Expect to Learn:

* How to talk to more conservative-leaning people about solar energy.

* How a last-minute amendment in Harrisburg could have ended net metering in Pennsylvania forever, and how CEN caught it and stopped it from moving.

* The four “pillars” that resonate in conservative communities (developers can use them to get their projects across the finish line).

Quotes from the Episode:

“Meet people where they are. Don’t preach—show up early, listen, and be a good neighbor.”– Justin Mason

“By putting solar on our roof, we just purchased our electricity seven years out.”– Jim Gregory

You can listen to this episode here, or on:

* YouTube

* Apple Podcasts

* Spotify

Transcript:

Aaron Nichols: Hello everyone and welcome back to This Week in Solar. I’m your host, Aaron Nichols, the Research and Policy Specialist here at Exact Solar in Newtown, Pennsylvania, and we’ve got a very special one for you today. These are some guys who reached out to me on LinkedIn that I’m very excited to talk to. I think they bring a perspective that is much needed in the solar industry, and with that I will go ahead and let you guys introduce yourselves. So Jim, why don’t we start with you?

Jim Gregory: Aaron, thank you. And I’m so happy that you felt confident enough in us from our very first introduction that you could see that we brought something to the table of value. Because in this space, it is hard to find folks that talk about conservative values and solar in a genuine way and sincere and with passion. I think that will hopefully come through with our conversation. I come at this as a former state representative, Pennsylvania. I served six years in the House, just came out last year and been with the organization since last December, and I’ve learned so much thanks to my colleague Justin Mason. He’s a wealth of energy information. He’s amazing—you’ll get that sense as he talks through this segment with you. But the opportunity to let people know that as a conservative, I had one of the most conservative voting records in the House. Years I had 88 to 90% conservative voting record. But I was willing to work with folks on the other side to get things done, and I have this job because of that job. And the willingness to show that I wanted to get stuff done and work with other people is why I’m here with you today. That’s probably the best way to describe me and I’ll send it over to Justin.

Aaron Nichols: Perfect. And just as a brief summary, let’s just give a high level overview of what that job is and what the Conservative Energy Network is as well. And either you or Justin can go for that.

Jim Gregory: Sure. And I should say my title is the Executive Director. And we are a third-party advocate and affirmation arm of solar and renewable energy. But we also stand up for all forms of energy. We believe that we are here to help those other forms—the below the line, below the ground forms—sustain themselves longer. We need them. We need them to produce renewable energy, in fact, and Justin could talk about that as well. Without fossil fuels, we can’t produce solar panels. So, you know, we all have to exist together. What we exist to do is to educate grassroots and grasstops folks at the legislative level all the way down to the township supervisor level, and then in the neighborhood level what is truly happening. With the emotional support that the folks who are against it put out there, it’s so much emotion and we present the facts and we do that in a number of ways. And so I think that answers that part of the question and I’ll turn it over to Justin.

Justin Mason: Thank you, sir. Aaron, thank you for having us on the show. Stoked to be here and stoked to participate in this discussion and stoked to be joined by Jim Gregory. We both love our work and we love the opportunities in which we get to perform clarification to disinformation. My name is Justin Mason. I reside in Western Pennsylvania. I got into solar by way of doing the labor. I was pursuing a master’s degree at Chatham University in sustainability. I happened to be a Republican. It’s an interesting mix, truly. Well, I got into putting panels on roofs and in fields and wrenching, often finding times in the garage with a wrench in my hand. But beyond that, I got the opportunity to apply my inclinations towards energy. I had early inspirations from a young age seeing the Drake’s Well here in Western Pennsylvania as a forefront contributor to the industrialization of energy, which borne out the world the way we knew it right at this point. So I got into energy through solar. I had inclinations through trying to join gas and oil previously. I was SafeLand SafeGulf certified, landed with CEN—Conservative Energy Network—and their grassroots are the Land and Liberty Coalition in 2020. Did some early work right before COVID hit and then came on in a bit more of a part-time capacity, forging into full-time for the Land and Liberty Coalition and growing my role into the Conservative Energy Network, Pennsylvania. Working with Jim today, we seek to clarify to the disinformation that occurs around the education of renewable energy projects. We have four ethos we stand on: jobs, economics, land rights, and national security. With these four ethos in mind, people like to say GSD—get stuff done. I like to say “go slay dragons,” and Jim empowers me to do so quite literally.

Justin Mason: Yes. Quite literally. We show up into local communities to speak to the concerns. Because rural Pennsylvania is experiencing a rate increase. And with that, there has to be ways for us to address that. And utility-scale solar is one way that is quickly deployable. Eighteen months, and we can have a utility-scale solar project built if all permits and everything are in place, right?

Aaron Nichols: Yeah. And I mean, private landowners and private building owners can also just opt out of crazy rising bills. I mean, that’s one thing that we love at Exact Solar—everything we install is behind the meter. I love your frame there, Justin, of slaying dragons. Personally, I’m very, very into mythology and storytelling and went through a lot of reading of Joseph Campbell and have a mythological understanding of the world myself. And I think as a way to ground this conversation and establish that we are on the same side—because I think that a lot of people will see the headlines I put up in this and they’ll think, oh, conservatives, they don’t actually care about solar. This is all some sort of phony thing. Like, you know, they’re on one side of the aisle, they must have this checklist of beliefs. I would be interested to have the audience hear the story of how we almost lost net metering in Pennsylvania and how the Conservative Energy Network stepped in to help. And I would like to, for anyone who’s listening who’s unfamiliar, net metering is how solar projects pay for themselves. Because an energy project produces energy, there’s a law—sorry, yeah, because a solar energy project produces energy—there’s a law that a utility company must buy that energy at a similar rate to what it would cost them to produce it. And that is what net metering is. And we almost lost that policy in Pennsylvania, and y’all were instrumental in helping keep it alive, so I would love to hear that story.

Jim Gregory: Sure, I can tell part of it and Justin may be able to tell the other part of it. In last session, the Senate put forth a bill that only the Legislature could enact the use of Solar for All dollars that were made available through the federal government for Pennsylvania. I believe that total was about $158 million. They didn’t act on that in the last session. And so early in this current session, the new committee formed—the Energy Committee formed—and Chair Elizabeth Fiedler put out the bill to get this moving early in the Legislature to help enact the use of those dollars here in Pennsylvania. And to our very happy willingness, Justin was actually asked to testify in the very first Energy Committee hearing here in Pennsylvania, and it was on the Solar for All bill because of his experience that you just heard about putting up panels and so forth from the labor standpoint. So, the bill eventually comes out of committee, goes to the House floor, and in caucus there was an amendment added by the Republican caucus, and this amendment seemed fairly innocuous, but it was put forth by Representative Williams—Craig Williams, good man—and when it came time for a vote and the amendment was being discussed, it was being discussed on one side that solar panel owners were getting people this money that they shouldn’t be getting, meaning net metering. I happen to be a solar panel owner on my roof and I’m enjoying the fact that I get money for the energy I produce. I would not have done that had I not joined this organization and learned what I learned about why this is a good idea for my own personal use, so I can tell that story. But in a weird classic Harrisburg story, the Democrat House committee person who is most well-versed on this amendment language was off that day and was not able to be there to vet the language, and it went forward for a vote and was passed with Democrat support. And after that happened we made them aware—to their chagrin, and you know these things happen, okay, we’re not here to claim some great success—we’re just here to again educate. And we educated on the fact that what they actually did was approve an amendment to this bill that would end net metering. There was actually pushback at the time. Now, can’t know—oh, you’re right. And we’re just glad that we were right and that that bill is never going to go anywhere beyond where it is in the House. And as a result, net metering will not see that change here in Pennsylvania. So yeah, we can claim that we are the reason that that happened and brought it to their attention. And the Dems did hear a lot from the environmental groups about “What are you doing?” They had to feel that pain. But unfortunately, experience is the best teacher. It’s OK. And here we are. And that won’t happen again, and we’re glad that we could play a role in that.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah, and we’re very grateful to y’all for catching that. I mean, obviously, as a solar company that sells behind-the-meter systems, net metering is a huge piece of what we present to our potential customers.

Jim Gregory: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that would have ended—I wouldn’t have done it without it. I can tell you that here on my own. Sorry, Justin.

Justin Mason: No, you’re good. That would have ended Jim’s ROI before he even got started. Yeah, absolutely. You know, and many others at that—many others would have been impacted upon that who have current investments out there on these systems to offset their energy usage in an energy stewardship position. Because, sir, you recognize just like we do—investing in solar for your own personal application—accessory usage as is termed inside of township language… it’s energy stewardship.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah, I was going to ask you more about that term when I heard it. I haven’t heard the term “energy stewardship” before. So, thank you for that.

Justin Mason: I don’t know where it comes from. I just started saying it because I recognize the importance of the position in which Pennsylvania plays energetically to the transmission scheme of the PJM and then as well nationally—our contributions—and internationally our contributions on energy. Pennsylvania itself is an energy steward. And Jim and I get to participate in that—and you as well, sir—as you are a wielder of ROI sales. You know, you help, you seriously help to give others the opportunity to be able to own their generation for a period of time in which no other form of energy could do so without owning a wind turbine, a small modular reactor to power your home, or even having a natural gas line outside of your home, like some Pennsylvanians are privileged to have because of the depth of the years in the agrarian world. Yeah, so energy investments are key, and when you make them, you’re an energy steward.

Aaron Nichols: And I think that’s a key point too that ties well into y’all’s beliefs is that when you own a solar energy system, the energy is yours. It’s not you perpetually renting energy from a utility company. It’s you—on your land or your home—owning the output of that system and deciding what you want to do with it.

Jim Gregory: Yeah, those are a lot of things. In addition to that, Aaron—though I recognize that what we did here for our own home actually helped my neighbors because outages here were occurring, and what we do by developing our own energy is we take and put less strain on my neighborhood’s grid by doing what we’re doing, because we’re not pulling energy that is going to their homes.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah, I think that ties really well into the next question, which is: What do you wish more conservatives understood about solar power?

Jim Gregory: Justin, go ahead, I’ll dovetail off of you.

Justin Mason: Sure. The investment opportunity that it brings—not only locally in an economic sense for in-development, because when a solar project comes to your town on a community or utility scale, there’s a lot of different contributors to constituting the construction of that facility. So, one, there’s an economic benefit; two, there’s a personal investment benefit that Representative Gregory is experiencing himself on his own roof at this time and will for years to come. Seven years, I believe, is ROI. Even our Pennsylvania Farm Bureau president, Chris Hoffman, will be experiencing himself as CEN helped President Hoffman of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau secure a reasonable ROI—it’s two years in. He submitted for a REAP grant (Rural Energy for America Program) grant through Luminous Solar. Some friends of ours out of New Jersey—shout out to Greg Weissman and Stephen Schwartz with Luminous Solar, Stephen Owens. Awesome developers, awesome people to work with. They helped us get Chris Hoffman set up with solar too. So from a conservative standpoint, it’s not only the local economic flourishment and benefit that utility and community-scale solar projects bring, but it’s also that personal investment standpoint opportunity that even Jim can tell you about.

Jim Gregory: Yeah, and Aaron, the significance of having the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau president be a voice of support for why this is important for agriculture and for farmers. Not all farmers have Class 1, 2, or even 3 soils. Some have Class 4 and 5, and the ability for even a legacy farm—which means it’s a hundred years old or older—to sustain itself and continue and they have level 4 or 5 soil. They can’t continue to sustain just on crops. The opportunity to look at their bottom line and realize they can impact it… We’re always telling farmers, diversify, diversify, diversify—put up a chicken coop, do a welding shop, do a bike shop, do a market, do solar. Well, no, no, we don’t want that. We’re always turning around… Yeah, they have to diversify. And the opportunity to push back on those emotional—it’s a safety concern; it leaches; the ground is never going to be the same. The ground is never the same when a township allows for a development—housing development. Once that happens it’s gone. If you allow for solar, the ground is returned to its original quality when it is taken apart, and it has to be taken apart right down to the concrete pads. And so the ability for these farms, these townships, these communities that don’t have a tax base that’s growing—this is one of those ways to make sure that we’re keeping rates and taxes lower.

Aaron Nichols: And there are also responsible ways that you can build it and still steward the land. I mean, I invite any farmers who are interested in that to look up the term agrivoltaics, and specifically look up the Agrivoltaic Learning Center and Jack’s Solar Garden in Colorado, which I’ve luckily been fortunate enough to visit, and there’s different ways you can use solar on cropland and grow around it and graze around it as well, as long as it’s built the right way. There’s so many different options there. And I do want to take a second to hit on ROI and the impact you’ve seen as well, Jim, because I think one of the things that a lot of people who are just getting interested in solar don’t realize is that there is a return on investment. And you’re talking about a seven-year return on investment, but then you’re going to have free power on your home for another 18 to 25 years. So I’d love to hear you elaborate on that impact and how that feels as well.

Jim Gregory: Sure. This is the one thing I have learned since then—how blessed my wife and I are that we are in a position that we could do this project by purchasing our solar panels and not leasing them. It is the best way to do this but it is an outlay, and so God has blessed us with that ability to experience a luxury. And by putting solar on our roof, we just purchased our electricity seven years out. It’s really all we did. We were paying $360 on average per month. The toughest months were over five and six hundred in December, January and February. And our last two bills have been ten dollars. Yeah. And that’s real money. Not everybody can experience that the way we have been able to—I’m just glad that we did. I’m glad that I have—you know, God puts people in my life for a reason in my path and they put Justin in my path and we’re doing what we’re doing because of that part of the plan for us. And so it’s amazing that we are able to do that. I think to your previous question, and I think it dovetails here, is what I wish for. I wish that we didn’t get to this point where we are with misinformation because of the previous oil and gas wells and leases that went out to farmland. So many of them were taken advantage of and they’re just gun shy about wanting to do this because of those experiences. And so we’re trying to overcome those experiences as we speak—as everybody is. I wish we didn’t have to get to this point by that, but stories like mine, stories like Chris Hoffman… when those stories are told, I think we have a chance to overcome those. And as long as we’re dealing with developers who are recognizing the importance of community benefit agreements, the recognition of the importance of decommissioning bonding—doing bonding of over 100%, upwards of 120–125%. That’s real money for developers to put into projects that those communities can feel confident about and push back to those emotional pushbacks that exist—that it’s a safety concern, or “I don’t want to deal with these people because of what they did to me on my oil and gas lease”—that we’re using these stories to overcome those previous difficulties.

Aaron Nichols: Right. That makes a ton of sense. Yeah, I think it’s so important that people can hear from people like them, which is why I love the work y’all are doing. I mean, you know, the last thing a farmer wants is to be lectured by some banker in a suit, who just doesn’t understand what it’s like out there, doesn’t understand the things that they’re going through. And farmers have a lot of limitations on their land use that they also have to deal with. I have a very good friend who runs a farm close to me, and she has been trying to build a community center on her family’s land and she went through four years of nightmares with the county and then eventually was like, you know what, I’m incorporating my land as a church. Now you can’t mess with me. Farmers go through a lot and so it’s very important.

Jim Gregory: Aaron, I served, as I said, in the House for six years and I served two terms on the Ag Committee, so I got to learn a lot about farming. And one of the things that I think we all need to recognize is farmers don’t want to rely on anybody. They want to be self-reliant. They want to take care of themselves while at the same time taking care of us. Right now they’re having to determine whether or not bailouts for them are a good thing. They don’t want bailouts. They just want to farm and they want to be self-reliant. And this is one of those ways that they can be self-reliant. And we shouldn’t have people telling them that they can’t do it because then all they have to turn to is having to rely on others. And that’s not what they want.

Aaron Nichols: Right. And I think this goes back to misinformation as well. I think unfortunately, clean energy just gets lumped in with other political issues and certain people on one side of the aisle just don’t really question that they’re against it—just like certain people on one side of the aisle don’t really question that they’re for it. And it takes a little bit of nuance to reach out and be okay with these things and think about and actually have real conversations.

Jim Gregory: Aaron, I’m going to agree with you, but I’m going to add. Right now in Pennsylvania, there is legislation with the Lightning Plan by Governor Shapiro and siting reform. And siting reform is going to struggle to go anywhere because there’s also disagreements within each party. If a far-left group doesn’t want to see something happen that’s friendly for Democrats, they can stand in the way of what would appear to be an easy Democrat issue. But right now struggles within each party are also causing delays to moving policy forward in Pennsylvania.

Aaron Nichols: That’s a good point and thank you for adding that. So one of our big goals—and as we wind down, I have two more questions I want to ask you guys—and one of our big goals for 2026 is to expand further west, and we’re planning to head out towards y’all. We’re very excited as a 20-year solar installer that has a really good reputation to start building out that way. And we were wondering what advice you have for solar companies who want to land more conservative customers? What kind of messaging worked for you, Jim?

Jim Gregory: So the messaging that works for me is that I can stand on my own story. I can stand on my record as a conservative voter. I can tell you who I voted for—it wouldn’t be a surprise—but I also believe that we need to recognize the importance of landowners’ rights and property owners’ rights. And what’s hard for folks that are more friendly left of center is for them to message those kinds of things. And so that’s why they come to us—because we’re able to help them genuinely believe that they can message what we message, because at the end of the day, it’s about getting a project done. Justin, you have a little more experience with this, please. And we are running out of time, so I want to be respectful here.

Aaron Nichols: Yes, thank you. We can go to 10:45 and I’ll edit this piece out.

Justin Mason: When it comes to working inside of predominantly conservative communities—i.e., rural areas—right? Truly, red supply, blue demand. Very much so. And when it comes down to it, you have to be very genuine. When you show up to the township, you need to come to the township. If you’re an industry participant, if you are a developer, you need to show up at the township. You need to show up at the conservation district. You need to show up at the county. You need to show up in the legislative office. You need to find what’s the community concerns? What does the community need? How can you be a great neighbor to those who live around your installation? What’s the prevailing thoughts of those who are going to be living next door to your energy-contributing piece to their community? Find out that, have a conversation, shake their hand, talk to them in the front yard, buy a cup of coffee. Maybe take them out for a meal. Talk to them. They are the neighbors of your installation. They need to be courted. And that’s where trust is developed.

Jim Gregory: Aaron, there’s a lack of trust in so much of our lives these days. And if we can meet them where they are—meet them where they are. Don’t come to them and tell them. Don’t dictate to them. Don’t preach to them. Meet them where they are, and then go from there. That’s what we have found to be the best path to getting support for our organization, for organizations like yours.

Aaron Nichols: Of course. Yeah. We’re not here to save you. We’re here to listen. Early and often. So, to close things, I’ve asked every guest this question since I started this a few months ago. And it’s a really fun moonshot question that I like to throw out there. It started because I was at my grandma’s 80th birthday party a few months ago. And as I was writing a LinkedIn post about it afterwards, I realized like, wow, 80 years. This woman was born into a world where renewable energy did not exist. She was born in rural Missouri 10 years after the Electrification Act, so barely when the country had gotten electricity. The only way we knew how to generate electricity was to dig things up and burn them. We had no other understanding. Windmills, I think, just pumped water. No one had made them generate electricity yet. And within 80 years, everything that’s unfolded has basically come out of nowhere. I think the first solar PV cell was 1954. Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House in 1979 and those were solar thermal. They weren’t even solar PV cells. And then within the turn of the century, we’ve gone from—I think I was talking to someone yesterday who said somewhere around $40, $50 a watt for solar energy—down just to produce solar below a dollar a watt. So there’s so much change that’s happened in the last 80 years, and if you two were to just completely project a hypothetical future 80 years from now of clean energy, what would you say? And don’t worry, because we’ll all be dead. No one’s going to hold this. But I would love to—

Jim Gregory: Go ahead. You go first.

Justin Mason: Yeah. Oh, put it on me. Eighty years out—new technological applications of solar: windows, paints on buildings. I would say even changes to the way energy is distributed via energy generation, right? We might have microgrids be more of a thing, if you will, in the sense of dispatch for immediacy of generation and instant gratification of the needs that we all have. Energy demand is scaling year by year, day by day even at this point. So looking 80 years out, what will be the clean energy contributions to the grid? I definitely see fuel cell, energy cell, battery cell type technologies well dispersed through the grid system. And I don’t know—maybe obviously fusion and fission. And a whole host of new technologies, I’m sure, in geothermal. I bet geothermal is going to exponentially take off in the sense of clean energy tech through the decades. That’s my final answer, Jim.

Jim Gregory: Aaron, I’m probably not going to answer the question like that, all right? Like when we are in conservative legislative offices and we’re talking about the need for this type of energy source that we’re talking about—and we remind them that preppers are folks who they relate to very much. Preppers don’t want to rely on the government. They want to be able to rely on themselves. I’m hoping that 80 years from now, those preppers are still preparing and not having to live something really happened. So that would be my hope for 80 years from now—that preppers still need to be preppers. But I’m going to work in a personal story here: as a person who lives in long-term recovery for almost 16 years, I have a one-day-at-a-time motto. And so I don’t tend to allow myself to look out like that. I’m just taking it one day at a time because I’m not guaranteed tomorrow. And so one day at a time, I realize that what I would like for people to have is that realization that they can overcome the fear of this type of source of energy before the pain requires them to. And every day that they feel the pain of their costs going up on their energy bills or they feel the pain of a blackout or a brownout—in Pennsylvania, we never thought that would ever, ever happen here because it should never, ever happen here—but it’s possible because sometimes we’re our own worst enemy in taking what we have and eating our seed and turning it into prosperity for Pennsylvania. I’m just hoping that we get rid of that fear of these energy sources before that pain requires us to. So fear is a great motivator to make you do something or not do something, and when the pain comes, you realize “I gotta do it,” but I would like to see—any day—that people realize that fear is not worth the pain that they’re experiencing and it’s okay to engage in these types of conversations about what’s possible.

Aaron Nichols: Great way to end, Jim. Yeah, that’s a perfect way to bring us home. And thank you to everyone who tuned in today. That’s been This Week in Solar. Look forward to talking to you next week, and thank both of you guys for coming on.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit exactsolar.substack.com

What’s new

New Jersey just elected Mikie Sherrill as governor. During her campaign, she promised to use clean energy to lower bills and strengthen the grid.

Her plan promises to use executive orders to freeze utility rates while New Jersey builds more solar and battery storage, with faster grid upgrades to handle growing demand.

Why it matters

A pro-solar governor in Trenton means more rooftop and community solar, more storage to keep lights on during peaks, and steadier bills as cheap sun power replaces pricier fuels.

New Jersey faces rising electricity needs and an aging grid. Sherrill has signaled she’ll work with the legislature and regional partners to speed up permitting and avoid spending on outdated solutions.

Virginia’s Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger also won on a clean-energy message, promising lower bills, a stronger grid, and support for offshore wind after recent federal blockades.

In Georgia, voters who endured six rate hikes in recent years ousted incumbent Public Service Commissioners and elected Peter Hubbard and Dr. Alicia Johnson. Both campaigned on lowering bills and expanding clean energy, signaling a pro-solar shift in the commission that oversees Georgia Power and grid planning. It’s the first time since 2006 that incumbents have lost PSC races.

These results show that leaders who tie clean power to affordability and reliability are being rewarded. Voters frustrated with high bills are backing leaders who promise to add local solar and storage.

The U.S. Now Has a Domestic Solar Supply Chain

What’s new

The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) says the U.S. now has a full domestic solar supply chain. The last missing link (ingots and wafers for solar cells) just came online with Corning’s new Michigan factory.

Why it matters

A made-in-America solar chain cuts supply risk, shortens lead times, and keeps more jobs and investment at home. It also protects from tariffs and trade shocks, and helps stabilize costs as demand climbs.

But SEIA warns that momentum isn’t guaranteed. Policy whiplash and trade crackdowns could slow down new factories and raise costs. Clear policy is key to keeping this manufacturing surge on track.

Half of All Planned U.S. Power At Risk

What’s new

SEIA also warns that politics are putting half of all planned new U.S. power at risk through 2030, nearly 116 GW across nearly 500 solar and storage projects.

Their review of EIA data flags 73 GW of solar and 43 GW of storage that still lack full permits and could be targeted by new federal reviews.

Why it matters

These projects span 44 states, with enough planned capacity to power ~16 million homes. SEIA says a growing federal permitting maze is stalling projects even on private land, after they’ve cleared local zoning and environmental steps.

Power demand is spiking from AI, data centers, and new factories. If we don’t continue to deploy solar power fast, customers will continue to face higher energy prices as our grid continues to age.

SEIA encourages anyone who wants to help ensure better solar regulation to go to SolarPowersAmerica.org to contact representatives and sign petitions.

Sources:

Clean energy candidates win Virginia and New Jersey elections

Green Groups’ Election Takeaway: Focus on Trump Energy Agenda Costs - Inside Climate News

The Entire Solar Supply Chain Has Now Been Reshored in The US

US has onshored full solar supply chain: SEIA | Utility Dive

American Energy Under Threat: Political Attacks Threaten Half of All Planned Power in the U.S.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit exactsolar.substack.com

Aaron Nichols sits down with off-grid specialist Kenny Grigar, who started living in an off-grid home powered by solar in the early ’90s. This was long before incentives or slick door-to-door sales tactics.

Kenny tells his stories from the DIY roots of modern solar and explains how even without tax credits, rising power rates make solar energy systems a great investment for homeowners.

Expect to Learn:

* What off-grid life and solar energy looked like in the 90s

* Why ranchers and remote sites were early adopters (solar well pumps > hauling generators).

* How the solar industry can move past “solar bro” sales tactics and build long-term trust.

Quotes from the Episode:

“We never truly needed incentives—self-reliance was the original incentive.” – Kenny Grigar “In 80 years we won’t call it ‘renewables.’ It’ll just be energy—and maybe no bills.” – Kenny Grigar

You can listen to this episode here, or on:

* YouTube

* Apple Podcasts

* Spotify

Transcript:

Aaron Nichols: Hello everyone and welcome back to This Week in Solar. I’m your host, Aaron Nichols, the Research and Policy Specialist here at Exact Solar in Newtown, Pennsylvania—and today’s episode is very special because I’m interviewing an off-grid solar specialist while I am actually off-grid. I’ve got a panel charging a battery bank that feeds a Starlink, and I can charge my computers off it—perfect setup for today’s conversation. Today’s guest is someone I’ve followed on LinkedIn for a while and really enjoyed, but haven’t met until now. It’s Kenny Grigar, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the show, Kenny.

Kenny Grigar: Thanks—thanks for having me.

Aaron Nichols: With you being an off-grid specialist who’s lived off-grid, you’ve got a unique perspective on solar incentives under the Inflation Reduction Act. The purpose of this series is to talk to leaders about what clean-energy companies can do now that we’re moving into a world without the incentives we’ve had for so long.

Kenny Grigar: Right. When I first started out there were obviously no incentives. I first started living off-grid and was a solar enthusiast around 1993. We did a few solar concerts; hardly anyone knew how to install the equipment. I grew up on a farm, wiring 12-volt batteries in series and parallel for irrigation and lighting. My grandmother didn’t have electricity until I was in grade school.

Aaron Nichols: That was the year I was born, by the way. What was price-per-watt like back then?

Kenny Grigar: Oh my gosh—upwards of $5 to maybe even $8/W. My first panel was about 32 W for roughly $350. We thought we were cool. My first 2 kW system felt huge. We were using 60 W modules, then 120 W (two 60s in one frame). Systems were extremely expensive. There was a lot more DC-direct because inverters were limited. I joined a professional outfit—Jade Mountain—around 1997 and saw the first digitally controlled PWM charge controllers arrive. We were still selling individual cells you’d frame into DIY modules. We made charge controllers and power systems. Everything was a mash-up—dozens of components from a dozen companies—like building a Jeep out of Ford/Chevy/Yugo parts. Analog meters were the norm; digital readouts and rudimentary data acquisition were just coming in. Trace Engineering was big, then Pulse, and a few module makers. Uni-Solar thin film helped nudge prices down to maybe $5–$6/W.

Aaron Nichols: And when did incentives start coming into play?

Kenny Grigar: The first I remember of a federal tax credit was the Bush administration—years after I’d cut my teeth and started my own install company. Even grid-tie systems we did then were often battery-based—OutBack, Trace, etc. Early grid-tie was still battery-first. Then string inverters arrived—Sunny Boys and the like—and we were like, “Great inverters, but where are the batteries?” It was off-grid first.

Kenny Grigar: There’s a LinkedIn group called Solar Pioneers—lots of early folks in Northern California, Colorado, New Mexico. You’d buy land with no prospect of utilities, so you combined a little PV for electricity with non-electric tech: hand well pumps (Lehman’s), Aermotor windmills, etc. Because solar was so expensive, systems grew over years—Christmas presents were a new module or inverter—arrays were a mix of 60 W, 120 W, whatever you’d pieced together.

Aaron Nichols: That context matters for this series: leaders like Kenny started when there were no incentives.

Kenny Grigar: Absolutely. The “incentive” was an American self-reliance mindset. Who loves hugging their utility? Even if payback looked like “forever,” nobody gets a “return” on utility payments. It also transcended politics then. Ranchers on huge spreads were early adopters—swapping generators and long drives for solar well pumps to automate watering rotations. There was never going to be ROI on gasoline + maintenance out there; PV cut the hassle.

Aaron Nichols: And generators need maintenance—if you neglect them you don’t have power when you need it. With the sun feeding a battery system, you’ve got resilience. I’m optimistic that, in a world without incentives, that American streak of defiance kicks in. Also: utility power keeps getting pricier for the same product that never innovates.

Kenny Grigar: Exactly—especially in places like Texas where some folks pay more for electricity than their mortgage.

Aaron Nichols: Oh wow—really?

Kenny Grigar: Yeah. If you’re in the last 15 years of a 30-year mortgage paying, say, $600–$800/month for electricity, that can eclipse the mortgage. Part of it is the “everything’s bigger in Texas” mentality—getting handed a 10-ton AC as the default. Few start with efficiency. There’s also a mindset barrier—“why a mini-split?”—and you end up with 13-SEER hogs. Back in the day, doing site evals for grid-tie (even with local rebates), I’d refuse quotes unless the homeowner made efficiency changes. People would buy a “more efficient” fridge, then keep the old one on the porch cooling half a six-pack. In the ’90s/early 2000s, solar folks were often the only ones pushing efficiency. Square footage wasn’t destiny—I’ve seen 2,000-sq-ft homes with 10 kids at ~2.3 kWh/day, and apartments using 60 kWh/day. With $8–$10/W modules we’d say: every dollar on efficiency saves you ~$8 on the PV system. The ratio’s different now, but the principle stands: efficiency is king.

Aaron Nichols: For companies moving forward without incentives, is the play to focus on efficiency and rising bills rather than over-moduling?

Kenny Grigar: Absolutely. Don’t over-module just to hit a quote or make a PPA pencil—make the load efficient. Especially off-grid, you can’t design from past bills if there aren’t bills. You design per-circuit and per-behavior. Be an electrical investigator—find the hidden energy thieves. Know your customer. And look, I wasn’t advocating losing fair incentives—oil has plenty. But I am a little excited to see solar stand on its own again. We never truly needed incentives; CEC-style rebates and certain muni programs proved PV is among the cheapest ways to generate energy. Doing it on our own again also helps scrub out the “solar bro” era. I’ve seen the tactics—fur-coat booths cheering a fake “eviction notice” door hanger that mimics a utility warning. That stuff made me sick.

Aaron Nichols: I get those mailers—same vibe as fake mortgage-warranty notices. I could talk off-grid and dishonest pitches all day, but let’s bring it home. My last question comes from my grandma’s 80th: she was born into a world where “renewables” basically didn’t exist. In her lifetime we got PV (1954) and Carter’s 1979 White House thermal install—and prices fell off a cliff. If we extrapolate 80 years forward, what’s your wild prediction? No one can hold us to it—we’ll both be gone.

Kenny Grigar: In 80 years we won’t even say “renewable energy.” It’ll just be energy—and maybe no utilities as we know them. Systems will be so efficient and affordable that point-of-source, distributed energy is the default—designed into homes and warehouses. A 500-W “module” might be the size of a smartphone. The whole house shifts away from a 240-V breaker panel; appliances are like laptops—moveable, DC-friendly, smart. Years ago I said by 2025 solar should be as easy as Geek Squad installing a home theater—we’re behind on that, but that’s the trajectory. If it eliminates “cool solar guys” like me doing installs, so be it. It’ll just be energy—and maybe no bills.

Aaron Nichols: Thank you so much for coming on, Kenny. Where can people find you?

Kenny Grigar: solarescue.com and LinkedIn. And hopefully I’ll have good news soon—I’m planning to join a great team (can’t say more yet).

Aaron Nichols: Thanks for making the time, Kenny. That’s This Week in Solar—see you next week.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit exactsolar.substack.com

Note: We experienced technical difficulties that resulted in audio issues during this episode. We apologize for the inconvenience!

Happy Halloween from Exact Solar! I’m interested to hear how you’ll be celebrating in the comments. I’ll personally be officiating my friend’s wedding in Oaxaca, Mexico.

What’s new

YEAH Philly, a youth empowerment nonprofit in Philadelphia, just switched on a 12-kW rooftop solar array that will cover 100% of its electricity needs.

The project was funded through a RE-volv partnership with Good Energy Collaborative and GreenBrilliance, boosted by a Changemaker Program grant from Billie Eilish and REVERB, with support from the Solar Moonshot Program.

Why it matters

Anytime a nonprofit goes solar, they free up budget to spend on the things that actually matter, instead of ever-rising energy bills.

Now, YEAH Philly has more money for their core mission: supporting youth with jobs, advocacy, and community care.

YEAH celebrated their new solar energy system with music, food, a local resource fair, and a ribbon-cutting.

Kendra Van De Water, YEAH Philly’s co-executive Director, had this to say:

“Solar energy is the future for nonprofits, not just because of the cost savings, but because this is a way for us to invest in our communities.”

If you or someone you know works for a non-profit in the Philadelphia area, get in touch with us at Exact Solar! We love building projects with social impact.

New Jersey Expands Commercial Building Program to Make Adding Solar Easier

What’s new

New Jersey greenlit RETROFIT NJ, a grant program that helps bankroll building upgrades, including solar plus batteries.

Why it matters

Awards range from $2.5 million to $12.5 million for projects costing at least $5 million and bundling three or more clean-energy measures. Grant funds will cover design through commissioning.

Nonprofits and tax-exempt institutions can get up to 60% of the cost of these upgrades reimbursed; commercial owners up to 50%.

Applications will open in the first few months of 2026 and will be accepted on a rolling basis. If you’re a commercial building owner in New Jersey, please contact us, and we’ll get the process started!

Solar is The U.S.’s Top Renewable Energy Source

What’s new

EIA’s latest Electric Power Monthly report (through August 31, 2025) shows solar is now the top renewable electricity source in the U.S. Wind+solar provided 19.1% of U.S. power in the first eight months of 2025, exceeding coal by 16.2% and nuclear by 11.7%, while renewables overall climbed to 26.1% of generation.

Why it matters

Storage additions are accelerating, natural gas output edged down, and coal capacity continues to retire. Cleaner, more flexible resources are scaling and increasingly setting the pace for reliability and long-term cost control.

Solar is now financially “too good to say no to,” and we’re deploying it at record speed.

Sources:

Billie Eilish grant program makes solar project possible for West Philadelphia youth organization

Billie Eilish grant program makes solar project possible for West Philadelphia youth organization - Energy News

YEAH Philly

New Jersey expands building retrofit grant program to cover solar + storage upgrades

Solar beats wind, hydro for top renewable electricity source in US

Electric Power Monthly - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit exactsolar.substack.com

Aaron Nichols talks with Dhanur Grandhi, CEO of Wattbot and a 15-year veteran of working with national residential solar companies. They cover why Dhanur believes the future of solar is local and how he’s building a product (Wattbot) that will make it easier for homeowners to choose the best local solar companies.

Expect to Learn:

* Why 70–75% of U.S. rooftop solar is installed by local contractors, not corporate installers.

* The two decisions every homeowner must make (Is solar good for my home, and who should I hire to install it?) And how Wattbott can guide them through both.

* Why state-level solar permitting reform is about to become hugely important.

Quotes from the Episode:

“People don’t decide to go solar because they were sold, they decide because they understand.”

– Dhanur Grandhi

“Start with this belief: subsidy-free solar is possible.”

– Dhanur Grandhi

You can listen to this episode here, or on:

* YouTube

* Apple Podcasts

* Spotify

Transcript:

Aaron Nichols: Hello everyone and welcome back to This Week in Solar. I’m your host, Aaron Nichols, the Research and Policy Specialist here at Exact Solar in Newtown, Pennsylvania, and this episode is part of our short interview series connecting with folks who’ve been in renewable energy a long time—to assure anyone in the industry or thinking about going solar that, even if Inflation Reduction Act incentives are temporarily gone, renewable energy isn’t going anywhere. Today’s guest has been in solar and renewables for quite a while and is now building an exciting product to help solar companies as we go forward. Let me introduce Dhanur Grandhi.

Dhanur Grandhi: Howdy… howdy. So excited—yeah, we need more shows like this, don’t we? We definitely do. There are real conversations that need to happen, and I appreciate what you do. And yes, I’m the CEO of Wattbot. Quick intro: I’ve been in what we call residential solar / distributed energy / consumer electrification for about 15 years. My story started in China helping solar panel manufacturers ship globally; it hit me that a new energy economy was coming. I quit, moved to the U.S., studied energy, started one of the industry’s first software-enabled solar concierge companies, sold that, then spent 10 years building at Sunrun and Mosaic. Over the last decade I’ve spoken to ~1,000 homeowners, worked with hundreds of great businesses, shadowed installs and ride-alongs, sat in call centers—trying to understand why people buy or don’t, and how to help them decide better and faster. I needed a break but couldn’t leave the space, so I started Wattbot with my co-founder/CTO. Our goal: drive adoption of solar and electrification. The honest insight: on one hand we have amazing innovation in hardware/software/services/financing/orchestration; on the other hand, the typical consumer is unaware, apathetic, irrational, and the topic is too complicated—so decisions are slow and infrequent. We asked: is there room for a curiosity-led engagement layer anyone can use—type an address and explore options? That’s what we’re building to help everyone solarize and electrify.

Aaron Nichols: That’s amazing. At Exact we’ve realized there’s a huge education burden before a homeowner or business even wants to go solar—learning incentives, local rules, how the project flows, feeling comfortable with roof work, trusting the company. Some companies have abused that trust and made it harder for the rest; there are good actors too. I’ve heard you talk about enabling the “strong tail” EPCs—can you elaborate on that and how Wattbot helps them?

Dhanur Grandhi: Of the ~5 million U.S. solar homes, about 70–75% were installed by local businesses. Big names are on the leaderboard, but they didn’t do all the jobs. Solar and storage are home-improvement projects—and home improvement is local. There’s a reason we don’t have national roofers or plumbers; it’s a trades game. If we want recovery and exponential growth, we must be serious about local trades—they’re indispensable. “Strong tail” refers to them. Before the budget bill news, we defined strong tail as the most rapid local installers; still true. Now it’s any business still in it to win it—budget bill or not. If you’re committed because solar is a good value, you’re part of the strong tail. This segment is critical, and we focus on enabling it.

Aaron Nichols: How did working for the biggest names lead you to want to enable the local contractor?

Dhanur Grandhi: Two steps. First, consumers are skeptical, unaware, irrational, short attention spans. The products are technical, complex, with benefits that aren’t perfectly predictable—hard to sell. I learned hundreds of thousands of companies are reinventing the wheel, selling the same stuff to the same people their own way—inefficient sales/marketing. We need a layer that puts the customer first: What is this? Can it work for my home? Will it help? Is now a good time? A couple cool companies with slick sales pages won’t drive adoption; we need something fundamentally consumer-first. Step two: distribution. Instead of going direct and spending on ads, we put the tool in sellers’ hands. Local businesses already engage customers, have reputation and ground game, know home improvement. So: build an agnostic consumer engagement layer, then give it to the trades to help them market and sell better.

Aaron Nichols: How does Wattbot help the consumer get to a decision?

Dhanur Grandhi: We’re focused on solar to start. Two big things. First, we lean hard into an installer’s reputation—that instantly differentiates the best from the rest. When a homeowner goes solar, they’re making two decisions: is solar good for me, and who should I go with? We help answer both. On “who,” we showcase reputation so you can flex that muscle. On “is it good for my home,” we use public data to answer basics non-pushily: is the roof good enough, grid reliability/outage exposure, risk from extreme events, exposure to electric-bill inflation, neighborhood adoption as a proxy, etc. Consumers deserve that—and companies love leads who’ve educated themselves.

Aaron Nichols: What changes over your 10 years led you to build Wattbot?

Dhanur Grandhi: Honestly, not much has evolved in how companies engage consumers. Tons of hardware innovation, tons of sales-software innovation (proposals/quoting at the transaction), but little that truly inspires at the engagement layer. People decide when they intuitively understand the need, urgency, and benefits—hyper-personalized to property, preferences, local climate, and finances. That doesn’t happen at one kitchen-table meeting; it happens over a consideration journey. I haven’t seen tools that serve that journey—so we’re building one.

Aaron Nichols: Now that the IRA is effectively repealed for now: for those who’ll stay—the strong tail—what moves should they make to weather a hard time?

Dhanur Grandhi: Start with belief: subsidy-free solar is possible. The substitute (grid power) is costly, and bills aren’t coming down—structural reasons prevent it. Severe weather makes resilience viscerally valuable. New flex markets pay people for participation. Hardware/software/services are excellent. Next, get leaner and smarter on sales/marketing. We just launched referrals; our challenge: shift everything toward referrals/word of mouth if you have reputation—stop burning budget elsewhere. New financing models are emerging; states will reform permitting. Side note: many locals have been quoting competitive prices (20–40% margins) even with ITC—some are already cost-competitive. The mindset is key; then systematically attack the sales/marketing cost stack. My friend Ravi has a blueprint to get to $2/W by 2026; we need plans like that, across CAC, ops, interconnection, design, permitting—reconfigure business models and partnerships. We have the pieces; we need to rethink how they fit.

Aaron Nichols: To close, a moonshot. My grandma’s 80th reminds me: she was born into a world where “renewables” didn’t exist; PV arrived in 1954; Carter put solar on the White House in 1979. So much in 80 years. No one will hold us to it—what does clean energy look like 80 years from now?

Dhanur Grandhi: I hope there’s no “clean energy”—just energy, and it’s all clean. I hope we power everything with electricity, not fire. Civilization’s long-term trajectory hinges on one decision: how we make our energy. Imagine a futuristic world still shoveling coal into furnaces—it doesn’t compute. I hope heat and energy are synonymous and truly electric. I also hope for true wireless electricity—fewer wires from generation to use and inside the home. Make the landscape prettier, the experience simpler. And culturally, I hope we choose the smarter way to power our lives over clinging to pollution for profit.

Aaron Nichols: We can end there. Dhanur, thanks so much for coming on—looking forward to what we build together.

Dhanur Grandhi: Likewise—pleasure. Thank you.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit exactsolar.substack.com

The big idea:

If cities and states cut solar permitting costs, families nationwide could save up to $1.2 trillion over 25 years.

Why it matters

Solar permits are a maze that change state to state and town to town. In a Heatmap article that came out yesterday, non-profit Permit Power released a new analysis showing that permitting reform could save Americans more than $1.2 Trillion over the next 25 years.

Many people listening who are interested in solar may have heard that rooftop solar is far more expensive in the U.S. than in Australia and Europe.

In the U.S., a typical 7-kW home system costs $28,000. In Australia, it’s about $4,000. In Germany, about $10,000 after a simple two-page form. That gap comes mostly from red tape, not hardware costs, which have fallen dramatically since the turn of the century.

Reform also opens the door for many more families. With faster, simpler rules lowering prices, 18.2 million more households could go solar. That means 198.1 GW of cleaner power for American homes and businesses.

Now that the solar industry is faced with an unfriendly federal administration, states are the battleground. Luckily, states have more power than we often think.

At the American Solar Energy Society conference this summer, one of the speakers mentioned that 70% of the locked-in carbon reduction in the U.S. since the turn of the century has come as a direct result of state and local action.

State and local elections are much easier to influence than national ones. If you’re on a local town board or city council, an easy way to lower permitting times and costs in your area is to encourage your jurisdiction to adopt SolarAPP+.

SolarAPP+ is an online permit tool that helps cities approve home solar and batteries faster. It was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, first managed by NREL, and is now run by the SolarAPP Foundation. Built with building officials, inspectors, standards groups, and installers, it checks standard plans against code and flags issues right away.

This cuts paperwork and delays, lowers “soft costs,” and helps families get solar at a lower price.

We may not have power over what’s going on in D.C., but we have influence over what’s happening in our backyards.

If we fix the rules, solar gets cheaper, more people put it on their homes, and we all save money as a result. If you’re interested in a future with more solar energy, one of the most impactful things you can do is help cut red tape for solar installations in your area.

American Solar Shingle Manufacturer Goes Out of Business

The big idea:

Solar shingles cover a gap in the market for high-income homeowners who really care about aesthetics. They entered the market with a lot of fanfare, but selling them hasn’t proven easy.

SunTegra, a U.S. maker of solar shingles, is closing its doors after more than a decade due to tariffs, rule changes, and no easy access to cash.

Why it matters

Solar shingles give homes a cleaner roof look than normal solar panels. Rather than adding a bunch of panels, homeowners can add hundreds of small shingles that produce power while looking like regular roof tiles.

SunTegra started in 2014 with roof-integrated shingles and tiles. Their design overlapped just like shingles and used a special vent to keep the tiles cooler and increase the energy output.

Unfortunately, due to regulatory hurdles and trying to navigate tariffs, Suntegra had to close its doors, even though demand for shingles remained steady.

As someone who works for an installer, I can tell you that we love panels more than shingles. As cool as they look, shingles just have so much more that can go wrong. Imagine adding 300 potential failure points into a system rather than 20.

SunTegra is in the process of notifying installers and customers of its shutdown. A service line will stay to answer any questions people have in this transition.

Sources:

Tariffs, rampant industry hurdles force American solar manufacturer out of business

Simpler Solar Regulations Would Save Americans $1.2 Trillion

About SolarAPP+

As Cheap as Our Peers: How cutting red tape can lower the cost of rooftop solar and offset rising utility bills

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit exactsolar.substack.com

Today on This Week In Solar, Aaron Nichols welcomes Emmitt Muckles. He’s a solar trainer, consultant, DJ, and self-described “social nerd.” We focused this conversation on why solar is the greatest career path out there, how to teach technical topics people actually remember, and why love and empathy make better trainers and teams.

Emmitt is an absolute joy to interview and listen to.

Expect to Learn:

* The “know your audience” playbook: how Emmitt gets manuals and SOPs to land with 14-year-olds and grandmas.

* Why it’s important to start with love, let love help you create art, and let art lead you to mastery.

* Career advice for newcomers: “find your rock” (specialize), then collaborate to move the industry forward.

Quotes from the Episode:

“I want you to overstand, not just understand. Start with love, and the art will follow.” – Emmitt Muckles

“If your bill jumps from $200 to $400 and you can get solar for $200 a month—you’re winning.” – Emmitt Muckles

“Two literacies every adult needs: financial literacy and energy literacy.” – Emmitt Muckles

You can listen to this episode here, or on:

* YouTube

* Apple Podcasts

* Spotify

Transcript:

Aaron Nichols: Hello everyone and welcome back to This Week in Solar. I’m your host, Aaron Nichols, the Research and Policy Specialist here at Exact Solar in Newtown, Pennsylvania. And today we have a very special show for you. It is someone who is a new acquaintance in my life and feels like a kindred spirit. I had so much fun when I was on his podcast—it was my favorite interview I’ve done since I started in solar two years ago (sorry, Nico Johnson—Suncast is incredible too!). It’s Emmitt Muckles, ladies and gentlemen. Emmitt, if you’d like to introduce yourself—say who you are and what you do—we can get into it.

Emmitt Muckles: You know, when you have a name like Emmitt Muckles, how do you introduce yourself? It’s “Emmitt Muckles,” and everybody goes, “Oh, it’s Emmitt,” that’s how it is. Well, let’s talk about what I do—what I travel around doing. The big thing is I am what the guy who got me into this industry, Mo Mahon, calls a “social nerd.” Which means I like really technical things, I’m in my head a lot, but I know how to interact with people and I have empathy. I empathize with the audience: how are you interpreting what I’m presenting? How are you overstanding it? I say “overstand” versus understand because I want you to overstand what I’m conveying. And a big one—in sales and in training—is: know your audience. So many times I’ve seen people who didn’t.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah—do you know Spencer Meeks? His superhero origin story is training speakers in clean energy—he wants to make clean energy sound good. He hammers on how technical professionals don’t know how to sound charismatic. He tells a story of going to a conference where one talk was on starfish and another was on properly decommissioning the most poisonous gas known to man. He figured the gas talk would be amazing and the starfish would just pass time—then the starfish talk was phenomenal with visuals and storytelling, and the gas talk was just a guy reading bullet points for an hour.

Emmitt Muckles: That is a thing. I was just in a conversation today with a potential client asking, “How do we create engagement with manuals and SOPs?” You have to find the human connection. As you digest it, how would you explain it to your 15-year-old, your 10-year-old, your 70-year-old? There’s a dynamic: your grandma has patience; your 14-year-old doesn’t. And sometimes all of them are in the same room—how do you communicate so they all leave with value? You have to dig into the spiritual part of yourself—take your “eyeballs out” and look back at yourself. What would you see if you didn’t know you?

Aaron Nichols: Let’s talk about the Venn diagram—spiritual, engaging—and then your consulting business and how that fits into solar and beyond.

Emmitt Muckles: Everything I do starts with love. You have to love the people, the content, the structure—if you do it with love, it gels. If you do it just for money, you can tell; it’s not there. When you look for the love, you find the art. Everyone who’s really good figured out the art—LeBron, Jordan, Bruno Mars—they flow. For me it started with inverter training. I was working for an inverter manufacturer because someone I’d trained in another industry brought me in. The solar coaster is real. I worked at Fronius for seven years—people were shocked I stayed that long—but there’s a time and place for everything. Through roles and factions, training stayed in my spirit. Even in sales, I trained others. Recently I asked, “Why am I doing this for one fine group? Why am I in a box?” I meditated, talked to the universe, and got the OK: time to do it. What’s kept me here is it hits everything I love—being with people; really technical things; harnessing my ADHD to focus on NEC codes, UL listings, and hyper-local policies because they might matter. It lets me use all my talents. I’ve even DJed in solar.

Aaron Nichols: I noticed your LinkedIn—about 10 years as a DJ. I’m curious about the origin story—and how you ended up in solar.

Emmitt Muckles: There’s a guy named Mornet “Mo” Mahon. I trained him. We were in gaming at MGM Grand Detroit; we did some work in Vegas too. I was a manager, he a technician. The UAW needed to sort pay structure—folks hired in with different skill levels. I created a course: rudimentary electronics and applied troubleshooting. You took a test, your score determined pay. Years later, we’d both moved on. I check on people—love is big with me. I called him: “How you doing?” He said, “I need you.” He was at an inverter manufacturer and needed a trainer; that earlier course impacted him. He brought me on knowing I’d pick apart service processes (I came from automotive). I became trainer and troubleshooter and created the Fronius service program for the Americas—cost savings and community builder—bring people in, show you care, help them save money or create revenue. As for DJing: I’m from Detroit—always a side hustle. Marketing folks would say, “We’re going to Vegas—want to DJ?” I’d say, “Yeah!” I DJed at the Stratosphere, Gilley’s, corporate events—might DJ at NABCEP in Milwaukee. It all flowed from friendship, concern, doing good work, and genuine energy—each one teach one—elders pass it down.

Aaron Nichols: I’ve been blown away the last two years meeting amazing people in solar. I was in education—those weren’t my people. Peace Corps—also not quite it. In solar, I found my people: service-minded, hustling, hard-working, believing in a better future. With you working for big names over a decade-plus—how have you ridden the policy waves of the solar coaster and stayed so high-spirited? That’s what impressed me when I met you.

Emmitt Muckles: I’m from the east side of Detroit—once the murder capital—those were my coming-of-age years. Every day I wake up, put feet on the ground, use the bathroom, have coffee—I’m winning. Some people can’t get out of bed, can’t have coffee—I’m winning. I’ve been outside the country; when you come back you realize how good we have it. We drive ourselves crazy with choice. But to move forward we have to reevaluate the financial model to make solar affordable. I suspected they’d remove incentives, people would say “solar’s dead,” then raise rates—and that’s happening. I moved to Indiana paying under $0.10/kWh; I read it could go to ~$0.19 soon. We saw increases—people asked, “What’s going on?” That’s when solar makes sense in the middle of the country and elsewhere—offset it. If your bill went from $200 to $400 and you can get a $200/month solar loan with 100% offset—you’re winning.

Aaron Nichols: Exactly. Even if you finance, you’ve already taken out a forever loan with the utility—with no ownership, no innovation, just rising costs. Home ownership has costs, sure, but rates going up while EV incentives drop means lots of folks bought EVs without solar to offset. Now rates rise—making the case for solar without incentives. If people embrace that, they’re golden.

Emmitt Muckles: We’re at the infancy. I love Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point—we’re not close yet. Meanwhile, we’re adopting energy-hungry things—AI everywhere. Data centers require energy. Either neighborhoods offset with VPPs and intelligent grids, or we get brownouts. Americans won’t tolerate that. One gateway is “solar generators”—portable power stations. Park one by your entertainment center, run a cord to a foldable module on the patio—even in an apartment with sun. It’s economical. We often look through a toilet-paper-roll perspective instead of broader options.

Aaron Nichols: EnergySage just wrote about this. I did a 2.5-week remote work road trip with my girlfriend—dispersed camping—200W panel, a budget battery bank, and Starlink. We took video calls from the woods. With a $100 marketplace panel and used battery bank, you can run an entertainment center off solar and avoid utility usage. It’s also about literacy.

Emmitt Muckles: Two things every adult should understand: financial literacy and energy literacy. We take both for granted. On money, there’s credit—even with a 500 score you’ll get a card (at awful interest) and use it. On energy, when rates go up you need to adapt: maybe AC can’t stay at 69°F all summer—bump to 74; maybe your insulation isn’t what you thought. A little logic goes a long way.

Aaron Nichols: Having been to the developing world, I’ve met people with more “common sense.” Extreme privilege can erode it. I’m the oldest—my younger siblings had more security. Different experiences shape different resilience.

Emmitt Muckles: Exactly. We have a 16-year-old who barely goes outside—walked to the mailbox and got sunburned. Their world is inside. We just have to take inventory of where we are and see what’s available. For the next-gen of climate-tech workers: look at what your life could be in 10 years. Find a rock that’s yours. Mine is training and communication—that means staying current on a lot. But you can be an SME on one thing—be the person who answers questions. Get enough of those people in a room and all the questions get answered; from there, everything moves forward.

Aaron Nichols: So: don’t try to be a generalist—find what you love in clean energy and bring your special sauce.

Emmitt Muckles: Exactly. I know someone who just does safety—deep nerd on it. Someone who’s only into batteries. Someone who lives in permitting (my buddy Jeff Spies niched into permitting). There are countless avenues—technical and human. Sometimes the job is the human interface that ties it together. Early solar had a tight community—OGs who built it. Later came the “tight-suit” era—sales-heavy. We just have to keep the community going. If you get a chance, talk to David Katz about how he started—tell him I sent you. The elders were OGs; they built the foundation.

Aaron Nichols: To close, I’ve been asking everyone the same question tied to my grandma’s 80th. Ten years before she was born (she was born in ’45), the Rural Electrification Act happened. We only knew how to dig and burn to make power. PV came in 1954. In ’79, solar thermal went on the White House. In her life we went from barely having electricity to today’s ultra-low solar prices. Where does clean energy go in 80 years?

Emmitt Muckles: That depends on us—globally. If we become a global community and remove “us vs. them,” energy can be localized everywhere. Think Back to the Future—a tiny reactor in the DeLorean. Maybe not that, but breakthroughs are coming. I’m going down the VPP rabbit hole—my household uses ~30 kWh/day on average; probably more than needed. If we culturally condition ourselves to use what we need, not what we want, renewables and other methods become easy to adopt. It’s a mindset shift, and your generation and the next are perfect for it—you see the world differently. Limiting consumption saves money and aligns with values, and the second-hand economy makes it easy to get what you need and repair it—building a relationship with your things. That DIY spirit is where we may be going—much like your grandma’s generation.

Aaron Nichols: Where can people find you if they want to connect or hire you?

Emmitt Muckles: I’m heavily on LinkedIn. On TikTok I’m @SolarEmmett. On X I’m @e_muckles—just type “Emmitt Muckles,” it’s a unique name. That’s Emmitt with “ITT”; Emmett with “ETT” is my dad! I used to hate the name at 13, but now it’s great—nobody steals the handle. Thanks for having me—this was a treat. And remember: the sun never sends a bill… from the What’s Up Solar podcast.

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