This Week in Solar

As of July 2026, eight states have signed plug-in solar into law. Two more states have had legislation pass both chambers, and the bills are now sitting on the governor’s desk waiting to be signed.

In today’s episode, we’ll go over where every state stands today.

Quick refresher before we get into the state-by-state list: plug-in solar kits are small systems that don’t require approval.

You mount a few panels wherever the sun hits your property, plug your inverter into a standard 120-volt outlet, and power flows into your home and lowers your bill. No permits required.

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. Fill in your information (we need your address to mail you a check if your friend goes solar).
3. Select Aaron Nichols as the sales representative.
4. Add your friend’s name, address, and contact information.
5. Get a $1000 check mailed to you if your friend goes solar with us!

https://exactsolar.com/referral/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=this_week_in_solar

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 starting today, 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. Fill in your information (we need your address to mail you a check if your friend goes solar).
3. Select Aaron Nichols as the sales representative.
4. Add your friend’s name, address, and contact information.
5. Get a $1000 check mailed to you if your friend goes solar with us!

Refer a Friend and Earn $1000

Aaron talks with Kellie Macpherson, Chief Operating Officer of Compliance and Security at Radian Generation, who leads compliance and security work for hundreds of renewable power plants across the country.

If you want to know what storytelling, reliability, cybersecurity, and human leadership have in common when it comes to the future of clean energy, this is the episode for you.

Listen to this episode here, or on:

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

Connect with Kellie on LinkedIn here.

• Why Kellie started posting on LinkedIn every day after someone told her she should not be speaking publicly
• Some of the amazing things that have happened to Kellie from building her personal brand
• Why smart companies are putting public faces on their brands in 2026

“Reliability, doing compliance well, cybersecurity well, takes away all of those negative arguments about renewables… and now we actually have the ability to go forward and change the grid and solve some really serious problems that we have.”

— Kellie Macpherson

Exact Solar just finished one of the most high-impact projects we've ever been a part of. Upper Dublin's new Police Station and Municipal building is now 100% solar-powered!

If you're wondering if your home, business, township, non-profit, municipal building, warehouse, or commercial entity can go solar and save money, the answer is probably yes. If you're in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, Exact Solar would love to show you the numbers.

Talk to our team

Aaron talks with Dave Kirkpatrick, a co-founder and Managing Director of SJF Ventures. Dave is a 40-year veteran of clean energy investment whose firm backs cleantech companies that make an impact.

If you want to know what the people who fund the energy transition look for in great companies and entrepreneurs, this is the episode for you.

Listen to this episode here, or on:

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

Connect with Dave on LinkedIn here.

• How Dave evaluates whether he wants to invest in a clean energy startup
• Why the solar industry currently earns a “D-minus” in public relations
• Which entrepreneurs are worth investing in (according to Dave’s 40 years of experience)

“I'm more focused on companies that have really engaged with the customers and are clearly solving a customer problem and are not spending too much time in the skunkworks before they actually encounter the market.”

— Dave Kirkpatrick

We’d love to pay you $500 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 $500” button below.
2. Fill in your information (we need your address to mail you a check if your friend goes solar).
3. Select Aaron Nichols as the sales representative.
4. Add your friend’s name and address.
5. Get a $500 check mailed to you if your friend goes solar with us!

Refer a Friend and Earn $1000

Several companies want to install tiny AI data centers in people’s homes. It’s not as crazy an idea as you might think…

AI needs more computing power, but Americans are beginning to loathe data centers and oppose them almost anywhere anyone suggests putting them. Homes already have power, internet, and space.

Some homes already have solar panels, batteries, and smart electric panels, making them perfect candidates to host small computing devices. This is a concept called “distributed computing.”

So, just like our episode two weeks ago (where we talked about how several solar and other technology companies are considering pulling from solar and battery systems when data centers need power), these companies are considering pulling compute from home-hosted computing devices when people need queries answered by A.I.

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. Fill in your information (we need your address to mail you a check if your friend goes solar).
3. Select Aaron Nichols as the sales representative.
4. Add your friend’s name, address, and contact information.
5. Get a $1000 check mailed to you if your friend goes solar with us!

Refer a Friend and Earn $1000

Sunrun is testing AI computer systems in homes that already have Sunrun solar panels and batteries. Homeowners would be paid to host them, and Sunrun says they plan to start rolling them out while they test how well they work.

NVIDIA and Span are testing GPU cabinets that attach to the outside of homes. These connect to smart electric panels and backup batteries. Span’s XFRA system would place liquid-cooled NVIDIA computer systems next to homes. Span is starting with pilot projects before trying to grow.

Akash’s Homenode is a different version of this concept that helps people who already own powerful gaming or work computers sell extra computing power.

AI has two big problems right now: not enough computing power, and not enough electricity to run it. A home with solar panels and a battery can help provide both the space and the energy for a small amount of AI computing.

This could be much faster than building new data centers, which can take years to plan, approve, connect to the grid, and build (a process made much slower by the fact that Americans tend not to want them anywhere near their towns).

There is also a strong financial reason for people to opt into these programs: Computing power is currently worth much more than electricity, sometimes 10-20 times more.

The technology isn’t available for the mass market yet, but in the next few years, we could start seeing this become more common for homeowners.

Aaron talks with Jeff Spies and Jason Vetterli, seasoned solar industry veterans and filmmakers who are about to release the documentary Solar Roots.

They’ve spent nearly 10 years filming and editing this documentary to capture the wild, off-grid stories of the pioneers who built the foundation of the modern clean energy boom.

You can check out the documentary and watch party here.

Listen to this episode here, or on:

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

• How the modern solar industry was built by back-to-the-land, herb-growin’ hippies in Northern California.
• Why these barefoot farmers could afford solar at $50/Watt (it’s hilarious).
• When and where the Solar Roots watch party will be (and if you’re invited).

“The hippies started the PV industry. I really was curious to understand, was that true? And that was the basic premise of the film... at the end of the film, we take this story and I think we answered the question.”
— Jeff Spies

“The vast majority of energy on this planet 200 years from now will be generated from the sun. It’s just it’s just that simple... Sand is an incredibly, incredibly abundant resource. We’re not running out of that.”
— Jason Vetterli

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 starting today, 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. Fill in your information (we need your address to mail you a check if your friend goes solar).
3. Select Aaron Nichols as the sales representative.
4. Add your friend’s name, address, and contact information.
5. Get a $1000 check mailed to you if your friend goes solar with us!

Refer a Friend and Earn $1000

Earlier this week, New Jersey lawmakers unanimously passed the Garden State Plug-In Solar Act, a bill that would legalize plug-in (balcony) solar across the state.

If signed by Gov. Mikie Sherrill, the law will let residents use systems up to 1,200 watts (roughly 3 modern solar panels) that plug into a standard outlet and lower electric bills, without needing a local permit or utility approval first.

The bill also protects access for renters, condo owners, and people in apartments by blocking landlords, HOAs, and condo boards from banning plug-in or balcony solar outright, though they can still set reasonable rules for size and placement.

Once she signs it, the new rules will go into effect in January of 2027.

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 starting today, 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. Fill in your information (we need your address to mail you a check if your friend goes solar).
3. Select Aaron Nichols as the sales representative.
4. Add your friend’s name, address, and contact information.
5. Get a $1000 check mailed to you if your friend goes solar with us!

Refer a Friend and Earn $1000

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

We’d love to 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 “Earn $1000” button below.
2. Fill in your information (we need your address to mail you a check if your friend goes solar).
3. Select Aaron Nichols as the sales representative.
4. Add your friend’s name and address.
5. Get a $1000 check mailed to you if your friend goes solar with us!

   Refer a Friend and Earn $1000

Aaron Nichols talks with Meghan Wood, CEO and co-founder of Raya Power, the first plug-and-play solar and battery appliance.

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

Connect with Meghan: Find her on LinkedIn, visit her website at rayapower.com, or follow the Raya Power Instagram account for behind-the-scenes content.

• Why treating solar like a piece of IKEA furniture or a standard household fridge removes the need for homeownership, roof repairs, and long construction timelines (which have kept thousands of people out of the solar market).
• How Raya’s system connects directly to essential household loads (like a fridge or Wi-Fi) without backfeeding the grid, completely sidestepping the need for interconnection agreements and electrical permits.
• Why Puerto Rico is the perfect primary market and testing ground for Raya (think frequent outages, high electricity rates, and abundant sunshine).

“When we thought of how can we actually get this [solar power] to more people, we thought ‘this needs to be an appliance.’ It needs to be something that’s as simple as getting a fridge or a table at IKEA or your wifi. Something as a renter you would get normally, something you could replace without too many hurdles.”

— Meghan Wood

“80 years from now, it’d be really cool if it was like, ‘of course my home is self-powered and that’s like the norm,’ not a contentious fighting point.”

— Meghan Wood

What’s new

Across the country, data centers are gobbling up power, and Americans are paying the bill for rising costs. Everyone involved in building these things needs energy now, but energy infrastructure takes years to build.

Tesla, Sunrun, and Renew Home say they can help meet the ever-growing power needs of A.I. data centers by linking together devices that are already sitting in people’s homes:

* Rooftop solar

* Home batteries

* Smart thermostats

* Other controllable loads

They’re planning to coordinate these into “virtual power plants” that can respond in minutes to increased energy needs.

By the way, if you look up “Virtual Power Plant,” it seems like no one wants you to understand them. This is the Department of Energy’s blurb:

“Virtual power plants, generally considered a connected aggregation of distributed energy resource (DER) technologies, offer deeper integration of renewables and demand flexibility, which in turn offers more Americans cleaner and more affordable power.”

It’s wild how no one wants to state things simply.

The best definition I found comes from the Solar Energy Industries Association:

“A Virtual Power Plant (VPP), also known as a Distributed Power Plant, is a network of decentralized energy sources — like solar panels, home batteries, and smart devices — that work together to generate, store, and manage electricity. It is a system of thousands of smaller devices that are aggregated, and they work together and function much like a traditional power plant, supplying electricity when it’s needed most and helping ease demand on the grid.”

The idea is simple:

* These companies ask customers who already have solar and batteries (or want to sign up for them at a subsidized rate) to opt in to a program

* They then use software to coordinate all of these systems, charging batteries and pulling power from them as needed.

* When the grid is most stressed, they slightly adjust things like thermostats and other smart home devices across millions of homes, then they use that extra power for data centers

The three companies claim they can free up enough capacity during peak demand to cover the equivalent needs of about 17 large data centers.

They cited real programs already running in places like California and parts of the Northeast as proof they can do this, and they say this approach can be deployed in months, especially in data-center hot spots like northern Virginia, where they say hundreds of megawatts could be available quickly.

If you’ve learned something from This Week In Solar and you’d like to learn more, drop your email below, and we’ll keep sending you free solar news!

Why it matters

A.I. is pushing data center growth so fast that the parts of the power system that are slow and expensive to build (new power plants, big solar farms, grid batteries, and new transmission lines) can’t keep up. This is a simple supply/demand problem. Everyone wants power, so power is getting expensive.

The worst strain on the grid happens during peak hours like hot summer evenings or cold snaps, when everyone turns on their AC or heat at the same time.

If home batteries and smart devices can reliably reduce demand or supply power during those peaks, it could delay or reduce the need for new “peaker” plants and major grid upgrades.

Homeowners who participate in these programs can earn payments, bill credits, or even subsidies towards battery installations (all depending on what their installer or utility actually offers).

Personally, if I were thinking about participating in one of these programs, I’d make sure I knew exactly what I was signing up for and that I was going to be fairly compensated before I signed up.

Especially if I was agreeing to let a large corporation adjust my thermostat from afar.

This Week In Solar is always brought to you by Exact Solar, your locally owned, 20-year-old solar installer.

Energy costs are skyrocketing, and no one seems to have a good plan to fix it. Between natural disasters, capacity auctions, utility rate hikes, and data centers gobbling up power, energy just keeps costing more.

You have no control over how much someone charges for power for your home or business, but you can choose to opt out of the cycle by going solar. If you live in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, Exact Solar would love to work with you to see if solar is a good fit for your property.

Whether you have cash to pay for solar up front or you want solar for zero dollars down, we have an option that will fit your needs.

Just click the button below, submit your info, and we’ll show you the numbers!

Sources:

A Solution to A.I.’s Growing Power Demand: Homes

Tesla, Sunrun, Renew Home team up on massive 16GW virtual power plant

Sunrun, Tesla say they have 16 GW of existing home battery capacity to send to utilities

Virtual Power Plant (VPP): Best Practices & Principles

Energy costs are skyrocketing, and no one seems to have a good plan to fix it. Between natural disasters, capacity auctions, utility rate hikes, and data centers gobbling up power, energy just keeps costing more.

You have no control over how much someone charges for power for your home or business, but you can choose to opt out of the cycle by going solar.

If you live in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, Exact Solar would love to work with you to see if solar is a good fit for your property.

Whether you have cash to pay for solar up front or you want solar for zero dollars down, we have an option that will fit your needs.

Just click the button below, submit your info, and we’ll show you the numbers!

In today’s episode, Aaron talks with Rebekah Pierce, a freelance writer and first-generation farmer.

Rebekah is a former educator who’s now on the front lines of the movement to combine solar energy and agriculture (agrivoltaics). She deploys flocks of sheep to control vegetation under solar arrays alongside her husband and their five-year-old son.

She’s also just an awesome human to interview.

Listen to this episode here, or on:

* YouTube

* Apple Podcasts

* Spotify

Connect with Rebekah on LinkedIn here.

If you’ve learned something from This Week In Solar and you’d like to learn more, drop your email below, and we’ll keep sending you free solar news!

Expect to learn:

* Why sheep are better for controlling vegetation under solar panels than diesel mowers.

* How farmers are growing everything from kale to sun-loving tomatoes under solar arrays.

* Rebekah’s advice on shifting the solar narrative from “climate change” to “food security” to win over hesitant local communities.

Quotes from the episode:

“Food security is really a non-partisan thing. We can increase our food production, we can help America’s farmers, and we can help our soil—all while increasing our renewable energy production.”

— Rebekah Pierce

“It’s kind of cool because we think of solar farms as futuristic, but they are allowing farmers to return to a style of farming that people have done for centuries.”

— Rebekah Pierce

Transcript:

Aaron Nichols: Rebecca, you’re living what I’m sure many people would consider a dream as a freelance writer who lives on a farm. I think that there’s a lot of probably novels or movies with characters just like you. And I’m curious if you could just give us a general idea of what your day-to-day life [is like].

Rebekah Pierce: Sure, so I guess I’ll start with the caveat that even a nightmare is a dream. No, and I say that very, very tongue in cheek. But yeah, so my husband and I started our farm pretty much right when we purchased our property, which was about 11 years ago... At first it was just your typical hobby farm. We both didn’t want to continue teaching, and we wanted to expand our farm to more of a commercial enterprise... I left teaching around the time of the pandemic, started pursuing my freelance writing full time. It was also right around that time that we turned our farm into an LLC and started exploring this idea of solar grazing and agrivoltaics.

Day to day, the writing business is my full-time business. So most days I’m in front of a computer interviewing, researching, writing. But I also help on the farm during our high times. We start lambing in just a few short weeks here, so it’s pretty much all hands on deck. It’s just us and our five-year-old son who very much thinks he’s helpful.

Aaron Nichols: So for everyone who’s listening, welcome back to This Week in Solar. My guest today is Rebecca Pierce, who’s a freelance writer who has covered a lot of sustainability and clean energy topics. Rebecca, will you introduce yourself and just talk about your experience specifically with solar?

Rebekah Pierce: Absolutely. So again, Rebecca Pierce, freelance writer in upstate New York. We’ve only been solar grazing since about 2022. For folks who don’t know, solar grazing is just the practice of grazing livestock, typically sheep, under solar panels for the purpose of maintaining the vegetation. For us, our first initial reason for getting into it was a form of farm viability. My husband and I are both first generation farmers. We got into this with not a whole heck of a lot to our names. We got our first solar contract in 2022. We now graze seven sites across four counties in upstate New York.

Aaron Nichols: So just to clarify—do you bring livestock to other people’s solar panels and graze under them, or you do it on your own farm?

Rebekah Pierce: We graze as a third-party service provider. Often it’s other farmers who are leasing their land to the solar company. The solar company, who is in charge of the maintenance, pays us to do the vegetation management with our sheep.

Aaron Nichols: And have you found solar companies to be pretty supportive?

Rebekah Pierce: Back in 2021-2022, there was a lot of us having to pitch that sheep are cheaper than traditional mowing. But since then, adoption has increased due to advocacy from groups like the American Solar Grazing Association. Companies are realizing it’s not as risky as they thought. There’s a reduced risk of damage to panels because sheep don’t kick rocks like a mower might. You don’t have to worry about fire risk. Also, you have a shepherd on-site every other day who acts as the “eyes and ears” for the O&M team to spot things going wrong.

Aaron Nichols: I think another benefit would be just you don’t need to use as many pesticides or herbicides.

Rebekah Pierce: Yeah, you’re using gas or diesel powered equipment to mow around these sites, so [grazing] is cleaner. We don’t use herbicides or pesticides at all. Through rotational grazing, you can actually improve the soil quality of the site. It’s kind of cool because we think of solar farms as futuristic, but they allow farmers to return to a style of farming done for centuries—moving animals daily and feeding them grass rather than grain.

Aaron Nichols: For anyone who doesn’t know, what are the major benefits of agrivoltaics or dual-use farming?

Rebekah Pierce: Agrivoltaics is just any practice of farming under or around solar panels. In my book, I call it “Agri-Energy” to pull out some of the complexity. Economic viability is huge because farming is a very risky business. Beyond that, shade is incredibly beneficial, not only for animals but also for crops. There’s a narrative that you can only grow shade-tolerant crops like broccoli or kale, but we’re seeing that you can pair solar quite nicely even with crops like tomatoes that prefer more sunlight. There’s even a trendy term now called “Cattle-voltaics” for raising cattle on solar farms.

Aaron Nichols: I want to pull the thread of being an educator. I came from an education background as well. I’m interested in how you think being an educator has helped or hurt you in this work.

Rebekah Pierce: As a writer and a marketer, I have to understand my audience. I think the solar industry has a little bit of a PR problem. The conversation has always been about climate and the environment. But energy has become politicized. Food security is a non-partisan thing. By leaning into agrivoltaics, we can speak to people who are hesitant about solar by showing it increases food production and helps America’s farmers.

Aaron Nichols: I close this podcast with the same question. My grandma turned 80 last summer. Everything from the invention of solar PV in 1954 to it becoming the cheapest power source happened within her lifetime. What do you think energy looks like 80 years from now?

Rebekah Pierce: I would like to see a world where we don’t look at energy production, food production, and community resilience as separate systems, but rather things that are enmeshed. I want systems that are circular, where power and food stay within communities. We need to get back to producing our power and food as locally as possible in a way that benefits everybody at the most direct level.

Aaron Nichols: That’s exactly the future I want to bring about. If you want to be found online, where can people find you?

Rebekah Pierce: I’m on LinkedIn—Rebecca Pierce. My website is jrpiercefamilyfarm.com. I’m also on Instagram and Facebook, but LinkedIn is my number one.

Aaron Nichols: For everyone who’s listening, that’s been this week in solar. Rebecca, thank you.