This Week in Solar

This weekend, October 2-4, the American Solar Energy Society’s National Solar Tour is hosting its National Solar Tour. This means that homeowners with solar are opening their homes to the public. This is one of our favorite times of the year at Exact Solar, and we are very proud to be a sponsor.

If you’re a homeowner interested in going solar but you’re still on the fence, this is a great chance to get all of your questions answered by real people with solar on their roofs (not by companies who are trying to sell solar).

One of Exact Solar’s customers, Curt Sawyer, is hosting a tour at his home in Doylestown, in person, on Saturday, October 3rd, from 10 a.m.- 2 p.m.

You can RSVP and find his address on the ASES Solar Tour website here:

See Curt Sawyer’s Home Solar Energy System In Person

Curt has a very large home solar energy system (21 kW), because his home is fully electrified and he and his wife drive EVs. His system is large enough that his local electric company pays him, not the other way around.

If you’re planning to see Curt’s system in person and you want to learn more about his system first, you can find the interview we did with him and his virtual video solar tour at these links:

Curt (Curtis) Sawyer — Doylestown, PA

How it Feels to Own Your Energy With Solar: Curtis Sawyer

If you’re not in Pennsylvania or New Jersey, and you’d rather participate virtually, you can find a tour near you at map.nationalsolartour.org

If you can’t make it to any of these this weekend because you have plans, no worries! Exact Solar has put together video solar tour interviews with several of our customers over the last four years.

You can find them all individually listed below, or go to the Exact Solar Solar Tours page to see them all in one place.

Aaron talks with Aimee Tuck, founder and principal of Corbae Creative, a branding, design, and marketing agency that works with solar, energy storage, and grid modernization companies.

She’s been doing this for 25 years (since Aaron was 8 years old), and she recently wrote the book on it, which you can find here:

Powerful Branding

Screenshot from Corbae Creative’s Website

If you’ve ever had someone tell you that your company’s website is too complex, or just blankly stare at you when you try to explain what your company does, this episode’s for you.

Listen to this episode here, or on:

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

Connect with Aimee on LinkedIn here.

Read more about Aimee at Corbae Creative.

This Week In Solar is always brought to you by Exact Solar, your locally owned, twenty-one-year-old solar installer for Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Aimee and I spent a lot of this episode talking about how a company’s brand is made up of the feelings that people have upon encountering that company’s public presence, reviews, and testimonials.

Companies that make people feel good about them at scale by doing great work over a long period of time have great brands.

Exact Solar’s been installing solar in Pennsylvania and New Jersey for twenty-one years. Most of our work comes from people who had a great experience and told somebody else about us.

If you’re interested in saving money on your electric bill as electricity prices climb to record highs, Exact Solar would love to help.

Show Me How Much I Can Save With Solar

• What does and doesn’t qualify as brand or branding
• One thing that damages a company faster than bad advertising ever could
• What to put in an ad if you want anyone to remember it

“Most people think about energy about eight minutes a year. That’s just about enough time to pay their electric bill.”

— Aimee Tuck

Exact Solar is an Amicus member, which means we’re in a purchasing co-op made up of the 90+ highest-reviewed, locally owned, most trustworthy solar installers from around the country.

This week, I got to spend two days with America’s most highly reviewed, locally owned solar installers at the Amicus Sales and Marketing Conference.

It was exactly the opposite of what the media tells us the solar industry is.

Listen to this episode here, or on:

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

Nobody in that room was talking about sending out door-to-door salespeople to lock customers into predatory contracts.

They were talking about how to make sure that they’ll still be there in 20 years, so they can answer the phone to service their warranties when customers call decades from now.

If you’re shopping for solar, here’s why that matters:

The last couple of years have been brutal. SunPower filed for bankruptcy in 2024. That same year, Titan Solar shut its doors overnight and liquidated. Sunnova went under in 2025, followed by PosiGen, which served homeowners right here in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. This spring, Freedom Forever filed for bankruptcy.

Those companies were among the largest solar companies in the country. Each one of those bankruptcies left thousands of homeowners with no one to call if something goes wrong with their solar energy system.

That’s why if you’re thinking about solar, you should go solar with a locally owned, trustworthy solar installer like Exact Solar, or any other Amicus member company if you live outside of Pennsylvania or New Jersey, because they’re thinking about this problem differently.

Here’s how these companies are planning to stick around for the long haul:

One of the coolest things about the solar industry is that thousands of people involved are motivated by the belief that the energy transition just needs to happen. So they often volunteer their time, energy, and attention to deploy even more solar outside of the work they’re paid for.

In today’s episode, Aaron interviews Joy Baxter, president of Clean Energy Co-op.

This community-owned, volunteer-run cooperative pools money donated by ordinary Pennsylvanians to finance solar projects for nonprofits, co-ops, and community-minded businesses across the state.

If you’re interested in how people can get together and affect change on a large scale locally by pooling their time and attention, this is the episode for you.

Listen to this episode here, or on:

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

Learn about the Clean Energy Co-op, or become a member, at cleanenergy.coop.

See the Valley Greene Apartments project (the Co-op’s largest to date, which Exact Solar is building).

• How a one-time $100 membership can help you crowdfund solar in your community.
• Why almost no energy supplier will lock in your electricity price for 25 years, and how an all-volunteer co-op can do exactly that for the buildings it works with.
• What researchers found when they studied climate anxiety (doing something about it by yourself doesn’t seem to help, but doing it with other people does).

“Maybe the shift I hope for isn’t in the technology, but in the mindset — that we don’t have to just keep paying the man, and that we can produce our own electricity.”

— Joy Baxter

The Garden State Balcony Solar Act (S2368/A4836) passed both chambers of the New Jersey Legislature in late June. New Jersey’s new governor, Mikie Sherrill, signed it into law on September 1. It was written with a six-month delay to allow the Board of Public Utilities time to get ready.

This means that as of March 1, 2027, any New Jersey resident will be legally allowed to buy a plug-in/balcony solar inverter, buy a few solar panels, set them out in the sun and plug them into the inverter, and plug the inverter into a normal wall outlet.

Listen to this episode here, or on:

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

The system will immediately start feeding electricity into their home and saving them money. There’s no permit, no utility approval, and no permission from a landlord or HOA required.

To be legal in New Jersey, a plug-in solar system has to check five boxes. It must:

• Put out no more than 1,200 watts
• Plug into a standard 120-volt outlet
• Sit on your side of the electric meter and offset your own usage
• Be listed or certified to UL 3700, the safety standard written specifically for plug-in solar
• Include a feature that shuts it off during a blackout, so it can’t send power onto a dead line where a lineworker might be working

Anything putting 400 watts or less into the outlet is exempt from any listing or code provision that would require you to change your building’s wiring or electrical panel.

The law allows up to 1200 Watts of solar without approval. Plug-in systems are exempt from interconnection agreements and from net metering rules entirely.

Anyone who maxes out that total could save roughly $50 a month on their bill, somewhere between $500-$600 per year depending on how much energy the system outputs.

One of the plug-in solar inverters costs somewhere between $300 and $400. You can get good quality solar panels on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist for $100 to $200 each.

That means that a plug-in solar system will likely run you between $500 and $1,000, depending on how big it is. It’ll pay for itself in less than 2 to 3 years, just with the avoided cost of electricity.

Aaron talks with John Sheldon, founder of GreatSun Consulting, who has spent almost twenty years inside solar companies as:

• An installer
• A salesperson
• An operator
• (Now) a consultant who solar companies call when things start to fall apart.

If you want to know why growing solar companies start to fail (and what it actually takes to fix the mess before it costs you customers) this is the episode for you.

Listen to this episode here, or on:

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

Connect with John on LinkedIn here.

Learn about his consulting work at greatsunconsulting.com.

This Week In Solar is always brought to you by Exact Solar, your 21-year-old, locally owned solar installer for New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Right now, Exact Solar has a PPA backed by the Amicus Solar Cooperative that can put solar on your home for $0 down, dramatically lower your energy bill, and lock in the same price for energy for the next 25 years.

If you live in New Jersey or Pennsylvania and you’re fed up with paying ever-rising utility bills, it’s time to see if your home qualifies for Exact Solar’s PPA.

Book your Free Consultation With Exact Solar’s Team

• Why the companies that call John for more leads, better salespeople, or a new CRM rarely have a lead, salesperson, or CRM problem.
• What “organizational entropy” looks like (it involves 30 separate spreadsheets, one key person’s memories, and processes nobody can explain beyond “we’ve done it like this since the dinosaurs”).
• Where AI actually earns its keep in a solar company (and where John has watched it quietly wreck a business’s finances).

“I don’t think it’s a technology problem so much that they have. It’s a clarity problem. They just lack visibility at scale.”

— John Sheldon

The U.S. switched on more than 11 gigawatts of residential, commercial, and utility-scale solar between April and June. 43% of all new electrical capacity added was utility-scale solar, and total operating US solar now totals 288 gigawatts.

That’s not just some big number. There are millions of individual stories tied into that total. 288 GW of total solar means that millions of people made the individual choice to either put solar on their homes, add solar to their commercial buildings, or advocate for solar in their communities.

Then, hundreds of thousands of people had to sell those systems, design them, and install them.

Batteries had an even bigger moment this summer. Storage installations hit a record 20.2 gigawatt-hours in the same three months, which is enough stored electricity to run somewhere around 700,000 average American homes for a full day in an outage.

This Week In Solar is always brought to you by Exact Solar, your locally owned, twenty-year-old solar installer for Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

We’ve spent more than two decades doing work we’re proud of. We’ve put solar on schools, churches, nonprofits, Habitat for Humanity homes, and private businesses. The combined output of the solar energy systems we’ve installed for those organizations has kept millions of dollars in their pockets.

That money can now be put to better use, instead of constantly paying ever-rising utility bills.

If you own, run, or sit on the board of a commercial building in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, we’d love to show you how much your organization could save by going solar.

Talk to Us About a Commercial Solar Project

As energy costs have risen in the US, so has the popularity of plug-in solar. We’ve been tracking American plug-in solar legislation for more than six months now, and excitement is building across the country.

People are very excited by the idea that they could just buy solar and plug it in without approval, to lower their utility bills without permission from their utility companies.

Critics of plug-in solar legislation often say that there’s no way it can be done safely. Proponents of legislation point to the fact that this has been done safely for more than a decade in Europe with almost no downside.

Now, there’s no question that Americans overromanticize European ideas. But in this specific case, they’re right to do so.

In today’s episode, Aaron talks with Craig Morris, executive director of the Bundesverband Steckersolar (the German Plug-In Solar Association). Craig has spent 25 years explaining Germany’s energy transition, and now runs the trade group behind the world’s first safety standard for plug-in solar kits.

Listen to this episode here, or on:

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

Connect with Craig on LinkedIn here.

Learn more about the German Plug-In Solar Association at bundesverband-steckersolar.de (you can translate the site into English with the menu in the upper right-hand corner).

• Why Plug-In Solar took off like a rocket in Germany
• How Craig and his association have helped guide German policy so that balcony solar stays accessible and fair for consumers (and what we can learn from that as we’re pushing for our own policies)
• What a kilowatt-hour from one of these systems actually costs.

“If your balcony cannot support two drunk people leaning against it in the evening, you probably need to fix that balcony. And if it can support your party, however many people leaning up against it for forty-five minutes, it’ll be fine with the solar.”

— Craig Morris

Exact Solar is excited to announce that on June 10th, the IRS redrew its map of “energy communities,” and most of Exact Solar’s service area in Southeast Pennsylvania and New Jersey landed inside the lines.

Commercial buildings in those areas can now claim an extra 10% federal tax credit on a solar project, on top of the 30% they already qualified for.

This IRS designation will offer commercial building owners who go solar within certain counties the opportunity to claim up to 40% back on their commercial solar projects. If their projects qualify for Domestic Content, they can claim up to 50% back on commercial solar projects.

Exact Solar worked with the Amicus Solar Cooperative to pre-safe harbor several project slots. Even though the commercial solar tax credit is on an accelerated phase-out, certain companies who work directly with Exact Solar can still claim the tax credit under the old Inflation Reduction Act Rules.

If you own or manage a commercial building, a school, a township campus, or a house of worship in Pennsylvania or New Jersey, we’d love to work with you to check if your building could qualify and show you how much your organization could save. Book a time to talk with our team by clicking the link below:

Show Me What My Building Qualifies For

Imagine if you opened your electric bill, and it said:

“We’ve decided we’re going to pay you this month instead.”

Curt Sawyer, an Exact Solar customer in Bucks County, lives in that reality.

Curt and his wife Candy went house hunting nine years ago with a very unusual requirement: they wanted a roof that was already worn out, so they could tear it off and build a new roof specifically designed to add solar energy.

If you want to know what it feels like to live in a home where energy is free, this is the episode for you.

Listen to this episode here, or on:

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

Watch Kurt’s full solar tour on our website here.

• What happens to your brain once your home’s electricity is free.
• How going solar can essentially turn your utility company into a savings account that pays you.
• What net metering and SRECs actually pay to an average homeowner who’s gone solar over time.

“Once you start actually operating and you realize electricity’s basically free now, you start thinking about your house in a different way.”

— Curtis Sawyer

This Week In Solar is always brought to you by Exact Solar, your locally owned, twenty-year-old solar installer for Pennsylvania and New Jersey. And we have a special bonus for This Week In Solar Listeners.

For a limited time (July 1st–August 31st, 2026), we’ll pay you $1000 if you refer a friend to us and they go solar.

(We only install in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, so please do not refer anyone outside those states).

All you have to do is:

1. Click the “Refer a Friend and Earn $1000” button below.
2. Select whether you are an existing customer or a new customer.
3. Fill in your information (we need your address to mail you a check if your friend goes solar).
4. Select Aaron Nichols as the sales representative.
5. Add your friend’s name, address, and contact information.
6. Get a $1000 check mailed to you if your friend goes solar with us!

Refer a Friend and Earn $1000