This Week in Solar

Since we started This Week In Solar last year, three news stories have gotten far more attention than any others:

* Plug-In Solar

* Large solar companies failing (Sunnova, Titan, Posigen, and Fredom Forever, specifically)

* The One Big, Beautiful Bill.

So in today’s episode, we sat with solar legend Sean White to get his opinion on all three.

Sean is a self-described "chronic optimist” and solar pioneer dedicated to training the next generation of solar pros and finding the positive side of the solarcoaster’s ups and downs.

He’s also very, very funny. If you’re looking for a light, optimistic take amidst all the doom and gloom, today’s episode is for you.

Listen to this episode on:

* YouTube

* Apple Podcasts

* Spotify

Connect with Sean on LinkedIn here.

Expect to learn:

* Why plug-in (or balcony) solar comes with unique safety and electrical challenges.

* Why seasoned solar pros should ignore high-profile company bankruptcies and just focus on building.

Quotes from the episode:

“It just goes to prove that the people in the solar industry are the coolest people in the world. And they're not out here for selfish reasons. They want people to be able to plug in their own solar.”

— Sean White

“They need to taper back all incentives. Don't cut them off all at once. Like 30% overnight is just stupid. It's bad for business, bad for jobs.”

— Sean White

Transcript:

Aaron Nichols: Sean, welcome to Philly.

Sean White: Aaron as well. Are we on your show or mine?

Aaron Nichols: Yeah, we’re on my show.

Sean White: We’re on your show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Aren’t we? wait. No, I thought we were on my show. No, wait. You want to fight about it?

Aaron Nichols: Well, why don’t we put it on both our shows? Sean, you’re here in Philly doing a sales training for Exact Solar. And there was a couple of things I wanted to get your opinion on because we are, you know, we do a news roundup here at This Week in Solar, which is my show. And I think the three stories that people have been most interested in in the last year that we’ve gotten the most attention and engagement on are first, plug-in solar, second, large solar companies failing, and third, the one big beautiful bill. So I wanted to, in that order, get your opinion on those things. As someone who’s been in the industry probably longer than I’ve been alive. Let’s start with plug-in solar. What are your thoughts on it?

Sean White: Okay, you teenager. You expect me to remember three things in a row?

Aaron Nichols: I’ll remember them for you. We can, we can go over them together.

Sean White: Okay, maybe we can just combine it. And what was it? was plug-in solar.

Aaron Nichols: It was big companies failing.

Sean White: Yeah. And what one big beautiful thing that’s going on with tax credit is freezing out. I say we just treated it as three different things. So so um, so it was a plug in solar company that failed because of the one BBB.

Aaron Nichols: I don’t think that’s happened yet because the plug-in solar hasn’t passed so it can’t fail because of the taking away of tax credit.

Sean White: Okay, I was trying to like cheat and get out of it just with like answering one question. No, let’s take these.

Aaron Nichols: Let’s take these all three of them. What is your opinion on plug-in solar? It’s getting a lot of momentum. Several states have just legalized it. Colorado is close. I know Maine and Virginia have legalized it. And we’re going to see more and more states starting to let people just buy their own systems and slap them down in the and plug them into a standard outlet. So what do you think about

Sean White: You know what, I was kind of thinking, it’s kind of a DIY thing. And I thought it was kind of interesting that the people that are full force behind it are actually people that it might even hurt a little bit because they’re in the solar industry and they’re trying to do solar themselves. And now people are going to be like, why do I need you? can just plug. solar. So I think that’s kind of cool. And it just goes to prove that the people in the solar industry are the coolest people in the world. And they’re not out here for selfish reasons. They want people to be able to plug in their own solar. And, and so I was at the the inner solar medical, the smart or E and inner solar being part of it conference in Munich last year, where they’ve been doing plug in solar, they call balcony solar for a while, because they kind of pioneered it in Germany, where they pioneered stuff in the solar industry and it was was kind of interesting to me that they had like a big trade show biggest probably the second biggest solar trade show in the world after SNCC and They have like huge like aisles and aisles of plug-in solar companies, balcony solar companies. And they didn’t just have like people making the equipment. They actually had cool dudes that I was hanging out with and they were plug-in solar installers. And so they went and they made their own plug-in solar companies where they go out and help the homeowner. So if people like might be in the solar industry and they know how to do wire. and stuff like that, people might hire them to do it. And then you can be a solar installer that doesn’t do permits. Because that’s kind of the big thing about plugging solar.

Aaron Nichols: Ooh, that is.

Sean White: You don’t have to do permits.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s part of what the law’s about. And I know they’re going to try to include it in the 2029 National Electrical Code. different states that are trying to do it. sounds like it might just be this huge thing that happens all at once. So it’s pretty cool. So potentially a lot of opportunity because like homeowners are going to want these mounted correctly, even though they plug into a standard outlet, the average person is not going to know how to mount them to their porch.

Sean White: Yeah, or like they and they were kind of telling me because I was asking them about that too and they were just like, yeah, there’s just some people want to have somebody do it a little bit better. Right. It’s probably not that hard to do some of that stuff, but maybe to make it more symmetrical. And then a lot of these systems, I think, have batteries associated with them. So it is something that you should be able to pick up at your big box store and take it home and plug it in. have battery, have some PV, plug it into the wall, there you go. But I guess the one thing that makes it so you might not be able to do in certain states or like maybe it doesn’t comply with the code if the states don’t approve it is that what if you got a new one every week, kept on plugging it into your power adapter and then you’re like plugging in and plugging in and pretty soon you have like 20 plug-in solars on your giant balcony in one outlet.

Aaron Nichols: has like 16 portable space eaters in it yeah don’t do that yeah I think someone mentioned that it might I think short out GFC I or like the current protection for anyone who doesn’t understand electrical acronyms and then you know like it would make it so that if there was water someone could touch the outlet and potentially electrocute themselves. I don’t know much about it, but I’ve heard that there’s some safety concerns we need to overcome. But most states have wattage limits. Like I think Colorado is 1,900 watts. think... Utah is 1.12, 1200 watts that you can have of balcony solar.

Sean White: But I think also it’s probably very hard to tell and very hard to enforce.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah. So it’d be interesting to see what happens when lots of people have it to see if anybody has a problem, you know, and they plug too many of them in. Because another thing that you know is homeowners. are going to comply with the rules, right?

Sean White: Right. So you can only have as many wads like that. That’s another.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah, we were talking about that the other day. Me and a friend was just like that, you know, so much of this depends on homeowner competence. But we live in America where. says there’s a sticker that says don’t put your head in here and turn it on.

Sean White: Yeah, and what do I do when my head gets cold? So we have to assume that there’s going to be some kind of user error with plugging in solar.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah. And so and so like, I think it’s one of those things where you could come up with all these different scenarios of like, yeah, like just like I was saying, to plug in a whole bunch of things into power strips and space heaters. It’s obviously stupid and probably unless they were just trying to be stupid on purpose to get their fire insurance.

Sean White: for attention online.

Aaron Nichols: It’s like the YouTube video, I wired 50 plug-in solar systems to each other to see what happens.

Sean White: So it would be stupid and they’ll probably have stickers on them and it’ll say like, warning, do not plug more than two of these into this kind of outlet. Yeah. And I think some other things too that I was trying to think of like how, like you have a branch circuit and maybe you have multiple plugs going to one breaker. So if you have different branch circuits, you should be able to put different systems or you don’t want to put in that same branch circuit. You don’t want to put your plug-in solar in one of them in two space heaters into the other one. Like there’s some little things like that that could get people into trouble. So maybe there could be some kind of way to get a homeowner to be able to know what’s in that branch circuit. And maybe there should be some kind of way where it could be simple enough for a homeowner to understand. It’s like turn off the breaker. See which plugs turned off and then go out there and like the ones that turned off you put something over like do not use or something like that. Yeah. Or do not plug two space heaters into this outlet. You can still use it. But just not two space heaters.

Aaron Nichols: OK. All right. So so overall, you think plugging solar is very cool. It’s awesome. There’s a lot of opportunity, but there’s probably going to be some people who mess it up and it’ll just kind of have to be like a natural evolution of who makes it through the natural safety testing of deploying a bunch of these with the public and seeing what happens.

Sean White: Yeah. And like, like, I guess I’m thinking personally, like, yeah, I teach a lot about codes and standards and how to be safe and stuff. But I also maybe in my personal life know how to be dangerous. It’s kind of fun. Like yeah, go like I know other people that teach solar classes and then you go to their house and like you’re obviously doing lots of testing here. It’s remotely legal.

Aaron Nichols: I think we have episode 100 coming. Mr. Money Mustache online. something like that. So he bought 10 250 watt solar panels off of Craigslist for like nothing and then just wired them in series just and then unplugged his water heater and wired them through. pulled his water heater off of his panel and just used them to heat the water in his home. And so far the water heater has not exploded?

Sean White: No, no, it’s actually fine. He must have read something to know that the right amount of solenoid.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah, by the way, if you’re listening to this, do not do anything like that. I work for an accredited installer. Please find professionals. Do not mess around with electricity in your home unless you’re a professional like Sean.

Sean White: Yeah, yeah, something like that. And there’s so many different rules of what you can do in this state, that state. And then you see what they’re doing in different countries. Right. And just I think common sense and being careful are probably like the most important things. hooking 10 solar modules into a hot water heater, if you did 20 maybe or something like that, something like something could happen. Right. And the worst case scenario like what I was saying was like like is But with the hot water heater there’s a pressure relief valve and say that some say that didn’t work and then the hot water got too hot and the way that a lot of old style power plants work is with steam and once you heat up water past 100 degrees Celsius 212 Fahrenheit it explodes right and pressure makes it not as explode as much but the whole hot water heater could be sort of like a bomb yeah, so So that’s why, unless you want bombs in your house.

Aaron Nichols: Right. Yeah. Don’t go messing around with that.

Sean White: And hopefully the pressure relief valve would work and probably would. There’s also types of ways to do that. They’re legal, and they have special controllers where you have direct solar hot water heater. And so let’s say it’s an electric hot water heater. A lot of electric hot water heaters have two elements in it, maybe like a top one and a bottom one. What you can do is you can take one of those elements, it, you know, do the direct solar thing on it. And the other one works off the electricity. And then on a cloudy day, you still have hot water. So Mr. Muddy Mustache, you might not want to sit next to him on a cloudy day. Maybe takes a cold shower. don’t know.

Aaron Nichols: Well, he would sometimes unplug it from the water heater and then plug it into a bucket.

Sean White: Okay, good, good.

Aaron Nichols: All right. So, lightning round, first round wasn’t very lightning, but lightning round number two, moving on to topic number two.

Sean White: Well, let me just say one more thing about plug-ins. Yeah, it’s cool.

Aaron Nichols: It is. I’m very excited about it. It’s true power to the people, especially for like renters who don’t have a roof that they can put solar on and have been locked out of that market. still stuck like you know where you live in PG &E renters are paying the same price that homeowners are paying for electricity and they’re stuck in an apartment they can’t do anything about it. incredible for someone like that.

Sean White: Yeah, you can take it with you, you can do it yourself, and it brings solar to the masses which could increase the visibility of solar and then make more people go to exact solar or get solar installed.

Aaron Nichols: Amazing. Alright, so number two, second of three things I wanted to ask you about. Since I’ve been in the solar industry, we’ve had several larger installers, multi-state installers, basically crash and burn. Some could say that they grew too fast and then exploded. There’s a bunch of different theories, but I think since I’ve been in the solar industry, it’s been SunPower, Sunova, Titan, Posigen, and most recently, Freedom Forever, as we’re recording this. I wanted to ask you your opinion about... Like, what do you think is happening here? Homeowners are very interested in it, but when a company does that, they leave homeowners without anyone to service their systems, without anyone to fix the systems that they’ve put in. And there’s a lot of people who are stranded because some of the biggest companies in the industry just grew really fast and then disappeared. Just love to get your

Sean White: are we looking at an angle here? is going bankrupt or like these poor people that don’t have the right service on their systems. What would you prefer? I like being an optimist. I like talking. I like turning every negative into a positive. Like I twisted around.

Aaron Nichols: chronic optimist.

Sean White: So let’s look at like the solar companies crashing and that’s not a new thing and if we go back and look at computers and tech, know, and you look at these companies, you know, like Google and Apple. and stuff like that and you’re thinking, man, that was the right thing to invest in. But if you went back, if you knew that was the right technology to invest in, but you didn’t have the right stock picker and you might’ve invested in, what was it, like Netscape or some of these things that we don’t even remember their names or it’s kind of a joke. You’re lucky when you pick a winner. like booms and busts you know and so it kind of cleans it up and the strongest survive Darwinism and all that kind of stuff and so even to look on the side of the solar coaster and there’s ups inflation reduction that downs topic three that we’re going to talk about this will be yeah and and so it it makes the industry kind of weed stuff out you know and it’s just it’s all part of growing it’s all part of part of evolution and there’s going to be some companies that go under and there’s other companies that are gonna be stick with it, make it last, maybe they foresaw that there was gonna be some hard times that they were gonna have to come up against, know, because things change, there’s four year political cycles and stuff like that. And then when the next cycle comes along and what will we have? President Ocasio-Cortez, know, they seem to correct pretty hard these days. Like if you just see, you know, got Obama, got Trump, got Biden, got Trump. I think Ocasio-Cortez fits that kind of overcorrection or whatever you might call it. So you got to be ready for that. And then when that happens, it’ll be really good for the solar industry. And the companies that stuck with it are going to turn into the Googles and the Apples and all that. stuff.

Aaron Nichols: Okay, so you’re saying this is more of a natural evolution and as someone who’s newer to the industry, I’ve only been here just under three years really, that I shouldn’t be afraid of this. This is just kind of what happens in any industry is you have like earlier adopters, people grow really fast, take advantage of opportunities, go out of business and then the people who are around kind of become the stable giant.

Sean White: Have you ever heard of a Tucker or a Studebaker?

Aaron Nichols: No, I haven’t.

Sean White: If you look at car history, they’re before my time, but there were some really cool car companies back in the day when they were like inventing cars in the decades after that, that went out of business. The Tucker, even when you turned the wheel, they had this mon... this headlight in the middle that turned. I mean, it was really cool. That’s cool stuff. And it might have been better technology than the competitors, but they just didn’t set up their business right. Or, you know, just like sometimes you’re too early for something. Sometimes you’re too late.

Aaron Nichols: Right. So it’s it’s just all, you know, catching the right wave.

Sean White: Yeah. You know, and it’s just the way things that the way things happen. You know, it’s like, why isn’t, you know, what would we had like AOL? Some people still have their AOL email addresses. We had Yahoo, there’s still a couple of Yahu’s around there. Yeah, but it’s it perhaps it’s something like that, you know, I kind of think too that that sometimes even the big companies go under like you’re talking about Sun power.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah.

Sean White: And sometimes the companies to like they sort of go under but somebody gets their assets and then they they they come back to life resurrection. Right. So, you know, corporations are more important than people. call corporate person, corporate person. And and so just like resurrection religion. We have corporate resurrection for for corporate religion.

Aaron Nichols: yeah.

Sean White: Well, you know that that like so I think Solyndra is going to come back. yeah and be the main company out there. They’re going to be like take over all the fast food, everything, you know.

Aaron Nichols: Folks, you heard it here. Sean White says, Solyndra is going to come back and take over the story.

Sean White: One time I was in the audience at the Colbert report. Yeah. Before he had, you know, he got. big bucks when he was a fake conservative talk show host. I was wearing a Salinda shirt and he was warming up on the audience. stood up and he was like, what’s that shirt there? I told him, Salinda is the corporation going to take over the world. Salinda had just died so it was all in the news. I told him my theory about corporate personhood and the corporate messiah. was to amazing. It was going to be Salinda. They’re to come back.

Aaron Nichols: You must have been his favorite audience member that day.

Sean White: He told the security guys to keep an eye on me. That was best joke he could come up with. I think it would have better than that.

Aaron Nichols: To sum up what we’ve learned so far, plugging in solar, very cool, but some things that we need to iron out and some natural safety evolutions that are going to happen. large companies growing really fast and then going out of business is part of the natural evolution of an industry. So let’s move on to the biggest story of the last year, the one big beautiful bill act.

Sean White: Why do you call it beautiful? Because it was the literal name. I know, but you’re just giving it more power. That’s true. I am still calling it NREL. I refuse to call it whatever they want us to call it. something of the Rockies.

Aaron Nichols: Especially because I’m from Colorado and I’m like... just rename landmarks that’s been you know that you know it used to be called solar energy research institute Carter named it Siri so by that same theory you got to go back and call it Siri I will happily do that yeah yeah so start calling it Siri solar energy research Institute because then Reagan he’s the one that changed it to NREL

Sean White: So then now the same thing happened that Trump did to Reagan. He’s like stepping on Reagan. Well, fantastic. Reagan is a liberal compared to Trump, right? He’s like like immigrants and all that kind of stuff. And yeah, and you know, was he was well, both of those guys used to be Democrats.

Aaron Nichols: anyway, well, I like to be obstinate, especially if I think it’s funny. So yeah, Solar Energy Research Center. So Institute. Yeah, Siri. Solar Energy Research Center. Yeah, Siri. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. And so, yeah, so what about this bill?

Sean White: So it’s all part of that probably bleeding. Of course, it’s like related to the last question that we just had about the companies going under and stuff like that. And sometimes it doesn’t just have to do with like a bad company or just the management changes or if you look at it’s SunPower, they have like internet. and stuff like that. Sometimes companies get rated. I’m not saying that that has to do with any of the companies that we’re talking about. So there could be a big company and the CEOs and the board, go like, let’s pay ourselves a whole lot of money until the company goes bankrupt. That’s a smart money move for a CEO. So. work if you can get it. And then SunPower, their manufacturing is just called Maxian. So that’s still around and I’m turning, is SunPower still in existence in some way right now? I’m not actually sure. Yeah. Yeah. And by the way too, I had the founder of SunPower, just had him on my podcast, 80 year old Dick Swanson, which I was super honored to use. And so he started SunPower. He developed the back contact solar cell. He came up with this thing called Swanson’s Law. He’s too modest to take credit for it. Anyway, so we’re back to the Triple B, a big bad, whatever you can call it. I have trouble saying it.

Aaron Nichols: I’ve heard it referred to in a lot of hilarious ways. Yeah. Triple B. But they’re all named for marketing.

Sean White: Inflation Reduction Act. Right. I think it was IR. It’s like, was it how did I don’t really understand how it reduced inflation, but it’s a good marketing word. Yeah. And also it gets a lot of like Irish dissidents on their side. I don’t want to say too much more. was going to cancel me. OK. I don’t know how angry. but maybe. And so the bill, you know, it’s like a big stand against renewables and all this kind of stuff. And so it’s it took out the customer owned. 30 % tax credit, right?

Aaron Nichols: Like New Year’s Eve last year, people are on roofs, installing in the snow just to get it out right at the last minute.

Sean White: And that way, if you weren’t fortunate enough to be a corporation like I am. I’m you can get this same tax credit until there’s a couple of different deadlines that I talked about in another podcast what is it it’s like there’s a July 4th is it

Aaron Nichols: yes start the project July 4th this year yes I’m starting the project

Sean White: so for big utility scale projects all that you start it like do something to start it and then they have a lot of time and it takes a long time to do those projects. Or what is it, the following year, year’s eve, I think, is that it?

Aaron Nichols: Yeah. And they have to finish the project.

Sean White: So, and then also I’m thinking too that they’re gonna get these projects in and you’ve got midterm elections November of this year. And so by the way, we are in 2026. If you didn’t know. And so November this year there should be elections, things are gonna shift around. Also they might extend the tax credit. Why not? like I’m hopeful of all that.

Aaron Nichols: There’s legislation actually that was just introduced. Patrick who was one of the only no votes on the one big beautiful bill Republican rep who’s actually our rep for exact solar for the district I had on the comments about that legislation. Yeah, so they’re thinking of extending specifically the commercial credit. Their legislation doesn’t include bringing about the residential credit. But I know that when we were doing the training today, you talked about how It’s really important that we advocate to our legislators to say that we can’t just take things away like really fast. It’s just bad for business.

Sean White: Yeah, they got they need to taper back all incentives. So I know all of the government listens to your podcast. You hurt me government paperback incentives. Don’t cut them off all at once. Like 30 % overnight is just stupid. It’s bad for business, bad for jobs. They create like an extra amount of business before it expires and then, you know, of course it drops off after that and then it takes a while to ramp up and it’s just, it hurts people. It hurts all kinds of people, all parties and all that kind of stuff and we gotta not do that anymore. No more. quick pulls. So yeah, so there and so that it affects people a lot when they when they do these things and then it puts in fear and then it makes people want to invest and so my other theory too is like yours like they might bring it back you know the best way to bring it back is have Trump say it was his idea.

Aaron Nichols: I mean yeah it could work

Sean White: yeah and he is take credit of will build a statue of him holding a solar panel I’m sure he’d love that. thing about Trump is he doesn’t he’s not afraid to change his mind.

Aaron Nichols: That’s true. So like, you know, it’s not too far fetched that it could happen. Yeah. No, think you’re right.

Sean White: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So we just got to make him think that he came up with the Maybe that it was his plan all along. To just take them away and then bring them back. Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron Nichols: is because he’s playing 4D chess. It’s just while the rest of us are playing checkers. So, okay, to sum up what we’ve learned so far, plug and solar, very cool, but needs to be figured out. Big companies going out of business, part of the natural evolution of the industry. One big, bill. We need to advocate with our representatives to taper incentives rather than take them away all at once. I ask everyone who comes on this show the same closing question.

Sean White: I just had an idea. Yeah. Before it was up. Yeah. My idea. is we have corporations own the plug-in solar with microloans and then you get the 30 % tax credit.

Aaron Nichols: Interesting idea. Because I don’t think it’s excluded that you could do that. Someone will come up with this. Some sort of plug-in solar PPA.

Sean White: Yeah, sure. Yeah. And it’ll pay for itself and all that. I saw one. Have you seen one of the plug-in solar things? Like Bernadette Del Chiaro just came to the North out solar bit that we had and she brought one and it was pretty cool. just plug it in the wall.

Aaron Nichols: yeah and really anyone like anyone who’s DIY just needs an inverter and then you can get the cheapest panels you can find on Facebook marketplace like from some job site and someone pulled off. Panels for $50 usually.

Sean White: Yeah. And I actually, in a way, pioneered Plug-In Solar because I bought an inverter that would plug into the wall at 120 and then I would carry it classes. So I’ve had that for years. In I was plugging in in phase micro inverters that would work at like 240 and 208. And I would go into the classroom and I’d find plugs that were out of phase with each other. And then I would have to have two extension cords come into one inverter and I could make it back feed a hotel. I’ve been doing that for like 18 years.

Aaron Nichols: So this has been a thing forever Yeah, yeah, and if you if you just do it today like nothing happens Right.

Sean White: Well, I guess like the one thing that could happen is You got your plug-in solar you’re not home. You got an apartment Everything in your house is off. It’s a bright sunny day You’re exporting your meter is spinning backwards the utility can find out And did you ever hear of Gorilla Solar? Like if you look at old Homepower magazines, they had every time they came out with a Homepower magazine, they had somebody covering their face, feeding the grid with solar. And a lot of those were just plugging into the wall.

Aaron Nichols: Right. Okay.

Sean White: and it would be like their 240 watt system that’s, you know, with six modules and all this stuff and they’re like plugging it into the wall.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah. So my friend with the hot water heater, that’s Gorilla Solar.

Sean White: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got it. And if you took plug-in solar that was legal for one state and not for the other, that would be Gorilla Init.

Aaron Nichols: Oh, OK. Yeah. not recommended for anyone who’s listening. We the rules here. We respect our state. We love the laws. Sovereignty. All right, so as I mentioned, I asked everyone who comes on the same closing question, even though this is your show.

Sean White: And yours.

Aaron Nichols: And mine, yeah.

Sean White: And whoever’s listening, you can have it too.

Aaron Nichols: So a couple years ago, I spoke at my grandma’s 80th birthday party. was when I came up. I realized that when I was reflecting on it afterwards, that 80 years means that she was born into a world where what we call renewable energy didn’t exist. I mean, we had hydropower, we had windmills that pumped water, I don’t know if they generated electricity yet, but PV cells hadn’t even been invented.

Sean White: PV cells being the building block of a solar module or solar panel. Yeah, the first thing that was like that was 1954.

Aaron Nichols: Exactly. And she was born in 45. So my grandma was born into a world where none of this existed yet. And the whole journey of the invention of PV, all the way down to PV being the cheapest power source in the world, the whole ride that we’ve gone on has all happened within her lifetime. So if you were to just moonshot, what do you think energy is going to look like 80 years from now? If we skip ahead another 80 years.

Sean White: Okay, I’ll tell you when that happens. Yeah. You come back on the show.

Aaron Nichols: So let’s see. Yeah. yeah, for sure. Yeah, you got me.

Sean White: And so I know that we’re going to figure out like longevity and life extension and all that stuff. And you know what? It’s like it’s possible. You know, there’s a lot of pathways for crazy stuff to happen. And even we look at our lifetimes, we’ve seen a lot of stuff. And I know that you’re probably younger. But but we look at our like it’s it’s like we’ve seen like people going like TV in your hand.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah. Cell phones, you know, like there was this thing called the break that was like then, you know, in the 90s, it was just like this lead acid battery cell phone or something that takes two hands to hold it sometimes.

Sean White: Yeah. And and so now we’re up to like AI when you’re just like having a conversation with your phone. Right. You know. And so, have you heard of Ray Kurzweil?

Aaron Nichols: Yes, he’s kind of a futurist. And he talks about the singularity and he was the CTO of Google for a while.

Sean White: And I’ve kind of followed him a lot and listened to a lot of his stuff. And he’s predicted a lot of this stuff. And I’m trying to remember the exact names of what he calls it and everything. But there’s like Moore’s Law. But then there’s also not just that Moore’s law fits more stuff on a small chip, but the price of it goes down too. So we’ve got like log on one side and log on the other. And so we have this, this fast growth of technology and it keeps like the doubling rate keeps, keeps getting cut in half or something like that. So you go back, um, you know, to like real long time ago and technology is like, got the stone age, you got the bronze age, the steel all that kind of stuff. Then all of you got the industrial revolution, you got the computer revolution, you’ve got the AI revolution or whatever all these things are. And it’s kind of crazy that my grandparents were like riding horses in carts, you know, and stuff like that. And then here I am mad because my car’s not self-driving. So the speed of technology goes up and And the way that the human mind thinks is linear. And the way that this kind of growth happens is logarithmic, exponential. And it’s probably like 80 years from now. you went back to the beginning of the solar industry, whatever, 2000 or 2010 or something, it was just like, in the year 2000, the whole world had something like a gigawatt, thousand megawatts. And now we have thousands of times more solar in the And it just kind of grows. And it just like you have this doubling rate, you know, as things double. And that’s for this one technology. And then there’s these other technologies and the you know, who knows what these technology in 80 years. That’s such a long time. If if what I say is true when I answer this question, everybody’s going to think I’m crazy. And actually, they’re the ones that are crazy. So like like like, I don’t know. I’m like 80 years from now, so we’re talking about somewhere in the 2100s over there. I think that it’ll be like, people will look at cars, like we’re looking out the window here at Philly and there’s Ben Franklin Bridge in the background, and it’s stupid. You know, like like all of these things going at different speed and thousands of pounds of metal zipping past each other.

Aaron Nichols: Right. The number one cause of death of teenagers.

Sean White: Yeah. You know, it’s just like stupid, you know, and it’s not it’s it kills older people, too. But we have, you know, cancer and stuff is more popular when you get older and heart disease and all that kind of stuff. So so independent pieces of metal zipping around with. traffic doesn’t doesn’t make sense. think that’s stupid. I think that there’ll be different types of transportation that where you know, like with a car, you go faster, you need a bigger distance, we’ll get rid of that. We’ll have them all going at different speeds, we’ll get rid of that. We’ll still have transportation will be much faster. We would probably be traveling. faster than the speed of sound, just, you know, even from across the city or something like that.

Aaron Nichols: Where do you think solar is going? Do you think we’ll just be able to paint it on surfaces?

Sean White: So energy, yeah, that is a good question. solar, some of like the future solar technologies, one way is to make a sun on earth. They call it fusion. I don’t think. I mean, I don’t think that’s going to be the big way of doing it because we just have a big old fusion ball up there and we have all these crystals and it does it. And so likely there will be space based solar power. They’re already doing it. And you know that they’re like, we’re trying to go to space right now. And it’s like, we’re almost caught up to where we were in the sixties, 1969.

Aaron Nichols: towards quite to Neil Armstrong yet. The time of the recording of this podcast.

Sean White: Yeah. So we’ll probably go way beyond that. You know, just like so so far away beyond that. It’s and so like, you know, the next energy race will probably be on moon and there’s water and there’s sunlight and everybody wants to get to the poles first because at the poles of the moon, you put solar there and the moon. doesn’t tilt relative to the sun when it as far as going around the sun. The moon is almost straight up and down. So like there’s no winter and summer in the moon. It’s just like, you know, it’s like it’s, oriented, oriented perfect. And so I think that means that the north of the moon is just pointing right at the North Pole. And wrong. it’s and so if you’re on the poles and you’re on the top of a crater or like a little mountain or something like you’re going to have sun even though the moon spends every 28 days. It’s got a 28 day day. It’s going to always have sun there. And so you just have to follow it. Or if you’re a little bit off, you’ll have some darkness or whatever. But those would be the valuable places to be is on the moon. And then you take in that moon. stuff that we water turned into oxygen and hydrogen. You got hydrogen, you got rocket fuel, you recombine them, you can take rockets off to get off the moon. Gravity is so much less than Earth. It’s not a big deal like it is on like so like on the moon. There’s no atmosphere either. You can actually go into orbit with this pretty much with a slingshot.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah. They call it like a rail gun or there’s something amazing. There’s something there’s something that they’re talking about.

Sean White: and so you can with Earth. You know you do something like that you have if you could get fast enough to go into orbit right off the surface of earth The air gets in your way and it heats everything up.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah Yeah

Sean White: And so though and so like moon technology that manufacturing on the moon because the moon is essentially the same elements as earth

Aaron Nichols: Yeah, and so we just have to sort it out

Sean White: There’s probably big old pieces of gold sitting around all kinds of stuff up there and and so that’s the new frontier And we’ve got orbit, we’ve got low gravity. Then pretty soon we’re going to have space stations. One of the things I want to able to go on the moon is a hotel with a room where you can have like high dives, where you can do like quadruple flips and you can put on wings and have like, like they were trying to do in the old days with those old movies where they’re trying to fly the invented airplanes.

Aaron Nichols: sounds incredible.

Sean White: But you can really do that maybe on the moon with very low gravity.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah, I think it’ll happen sooner than we think. And and and so you’re asking me where solar would be. I think I think a lot of it be in space. Yeah. But a lot of it will be everywhere. You know, like building materials just like all over the place. Shade structures. You know, a lot of the things that would be stupid to do today, like putting solar on the roads. Do you remember that solar freaking road? and all that kind of stuff. Like today’s technology is kind of dumb, eventually maybe we’ll get there. Maybe building integrated PV, which doesn’t make financial sense when you’re competing against like our beautiful rectangles that we put up. But as time goes on and technology gets better and cheaper and more robotic and stuff, we’ll probably see more building materials that are made out of solar. Maybe it’ll be something like stupid to not have a roof made out of solar. People are just like, what? Your roof doesn’t have solar on it? You don’t have a TV? You don’t have a phone? Maybe there’ll be, when you build a house, you just punch in the dimensions of the roof and a helicopter comes or drone and it and it sets the whole roof as just one giant solar module. Well, is there anything else you want to cover before we head out and meet the team?

Sean White: Gosh, well everybody keep it real, keep it fun, don’t be boring, get yourself NAPSET certified, Exact Solar to install solar for you.

Aaron Nichols: Love that. you know some you know some other galaxy with me

Sean White: okay if you have the tech to transport Sean to another galaxy send it yeah yeah yeah not Andromeda I’m like totally prejudiced against Andromeda’s yeah you can find Sean on LinkedIn yeah you can find me all over the place solarsean.com yeah thanks for coming on

Aaron Nichols: Amazing.

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 Deep Patel, Founder and CEO of Gigawatt, to explore how we can return to the original promise of the solar pioneers (power to the people).

They discuss how the industry shifted from selling energy independence to pushing complicated financial products, the growing DIY solar installation movement, and how off-grid systems, coupled with technologies like Starlink, are creating economic opportunities worldwide.

You can connect with Deep on LinkedIn here.

Listen to this episode here, or on:

* YouTube

* Apple Podcasts

* Spotify

Expect to learn:

* Why the solar industry drifted away from its counterculture roots

* The red flags consumers should watch for when buying solar today.

* How DIY solar kits are empowering tradespeople and curious homeowners to safely build their own code-compliant systems.

Quote from the episode:

“I think the biggest thing making a difference is we’re going to have cheap and extremely efficient energy storage. We finally cracked the code on how to store electricity. That was the missing link in solar, and now it’s a reality.”

— Deep Patel

Transcript:

Aaron Nichols: Deep, before we talked, you sent me something that I thought was awesome. I’m just going to read it word for word because it just felt like such a cool manifesto. But you said, “If this transition is going to last, we need to return to the original promise of the solar pioneers. Power to the people. Real independence through ownership, transparency, and systems designed to serve homeowners and renters alike, including simple and accessible plug-in solar.” I would love to hear you expand on what you meant by that.

Deep Patel: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Aaron, first of all, for having me on your show. I’m really glad that I get to tell this story about our mission statement. My business partner, Jeff Spies, and I had basically traveled up into Humboldt, California. He had introduced me to a bunch of solar pioneers that have been doing solar and battery storage since the late 70s. And these folks were basically living off the land. They were homesteading up in Northern California and they were living off grid.

These were some of the first people in the US to have residential solar. I was really thrilled about their story and very interested in it. I realized what they were doing was a counterculture movement that was happening up there. They were saying, “I want to generate my own power and I want to own it.” Those were some of the first people that were installing solar panels on their homes. I feel like in 2006, when the industry first really started becoming more commercialized and capitalistic, we went away from those roots.

Everything became about TPOs and PPAs and AVLs and all of this jargon, dealer fees, and this and that, right? People started coming into this industry and turning solar more into some type of projected financial savings. I felt like that went away from the roots of where this industry first started, which was freedom. It was owning your own power. It was resilience. And there’s a lot of companies like ours out there that are still sticking to that mission of bringing that power back to the people, where they get to own their own solar and storage. They can avoid all those dealer fees and do it a different way where they can maintain full control and transparency of the process.

Aaron Nichols: I had a really cool reminder of that. My then-fiancee, now wife, got me a stay in an off-grid yurt for Christmas, and we rang in the New Year in that yurt. We had to hike three miles in to get there. And when we got there, it was a fireplace, and then a solar array that fed into a battery bank, and we had everything we needed. We had lighting, could run the electric stove. I mean, it was such an awesome off-grid independent experience. I’ve been blown away by the creativity that people can exhibit using solar energy and the ways that they can set up things like that. I’ve found that as solar is becoming less of a hippie sort of green thing and more and more people get interested in it, that all of those things are actually very interesting for conservatives. All of those reasons that people loved solar back then are why people who are more right-leaning love solar now.

Deep Patel: Yeah, absolutely. And I think solar is one thing our divided country can all agree on is to own your own independence. It’s a very free market. To own your own power is something that, whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, resonates with both sides. Our country is founded on independence. I think this message is something that brings everyone together.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah, it’s so true. You also wrote that solar has drifted from selling independence to selling financial products. Do you think that shift was a mistake or do you think it was necessary to get the industry to where it is today?

Deep Patel: I think at a certain time period, it did make a lot of sense. Cost of panels, batteries, inverters, and things were so high at one point. And to go solar was just so challenging. None of the banks would want to even lend you money to do it. But now the prices of hardware and soft costs have gone down substantially. I mean, they’re still pretty high, but they’ve substantially gone down since then. Lithium battery prices are really going down fast. There’s a lot of banks that are comfortable now. You can just go out and get a HELOC or some type of regular loan, like how people typically finance typical home improvements. That’s the cheapest form of money they can use to improve their homes. Now that you can do that, the need for all of these specialized financial products that kind of trap people into these long-term financial instruments are no longer necessary. They can own their own power, and it’s easier now than ever.

Aaron Nichols: I think that’s a particularly interesting point because you actually spent some time in the finance world as well before you came to be the awesome solar entrepreneur that you are. So as someone who’s been in the finance world, what is it that makes you uncomfortable about the way you’ve seen finance and solar mix?

Deep Patel: I just think the way it’s being pitched. As we know, these companies have sales groups that go into people’s homes, knock on their doors, and it’s a very complicated instrument. I could see a CPA understanding it. But when you’re talking to regular folks, there’s a lot of jargon and complications; they might not understand what they’re signing up for. And then there are dealer fees involved in these financial products, which are massive. These dealer fees add tens of thousands of dollars into the process to get a person instant financing, when they can just do a little bit of work to save tens of thousands of dollars and actually own it. So I think that financing has its place, but if it’s quick financing with a bunch of junk fees involved, I don’t think it’s a good thing for the end customer.

Aaron Nichols: It’s not always easy for someone who’s shopping around for solar to tell the difference. I mean, we work really hard at Exact to make sure that we’re partnering with very ethical firms. But not every solar company is like that. So what are some red flags that you think people should look out for?

Deep Patel: I would say high pressure is a big red flag. Like, “close it now at the kitchen table” kind of thing. False, extravagant promises, like, “Hey, everything’s covered for a lifetime.” Those embellishments of what’s realistic are a red flag. If it sounds too good to be true—like nothing’s ever going to go wrong, you just sign here, we’re going to take care of everything, and everything’s guaranteed—the world doesn’t work like that. It’s over-promising. A lot of these independent sales agents just want to make some commission, and it’s really easy to over-promise things to get someone to sign. As a consumer analyzing something, you have to ask: can they deliver on these promises? Is this grounded in reality?

Aaron Nichols: I’m very lucky I grew up around a bunch of skeptical old Italians. So I grew up around a bunch of people that nobody was gonna sell anything to. Good for some things, bad for others. Sometimes I’m a little too skeptical.

Deep Patel: Yeah, for sure. It’s good to be skeptical when you’re buying something, when you’re going to sign a $60,000 contract with a company.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah, definitely. So I’d like to switch gears a little bit. I’m a big fan of interesting stories that solar enables. I think one of my favorite ones that I like to tell is that we built an off-grid system for a school. The company I work for, Exact Solar, is right in greater Philadelphia. The system powers a greenhouse with an off-grid system, and then students use that to grow produce that they either prepare for staff and parents in an on-site restaurant or sell in a local farmers market. Having had so much experience with the off-grid market, what are some of the coolest stories that some of the kits you sell have enabled?

Deep Patel: Man, our kits are basically going everywhere. We have some US government projects where there are off-grid needs—having embassies or special facilities that have power reliability concerns. There are water pumping projects where customers are pumping water for treatment facilities or infrastructure. There’s been an off-grid school as well, here locally, I think in Joshua Tree. This school is completely off-grid, and these kids go to a school powered by an off-grid solar system. So we have a wide range of off-grid customers over the 20 years, but a lot of our customers are grid-tied, and they now want grid independence. Even though they’re connected to the grid, they just want to own their own power and store it. They don’t want to sell it back to the energy company; they want to be able to self-consume the power they generate.

Aaron Nichols: Now, I got so into the conversation that I forgot to let you introduce yourself. Let’s take a moment and give the audience an overview of who you are and what you do in the industry.

Deep Patel: Yeah, my name is Deep Patel. I’m the founder and CEO of a company called Gigawatt. It’s a company that originally started under a name called Go Green Solar in 2006 and has diversified into a larger company that owns several brands in the solar industry. But what we really specialize in is helping people break free from the grid through our solar and battery storage kits. These kits enable DIYers, first-time installers, and home builders to basically buy a kit and our support services, and install it even if they don’t have full solar installation experience. Many of our customers who do it fully on their own are in the trades. They’re IBEW electricians, inspectors, roofing contractors. A lot of engineers, too. They’ll either install it 100% on their own, or they’ll do some of it and bring in a friend or brother-in-law who’s an electrician, or even hire out parts of it. And then we have first-time installers who have a client asking them to do solar, so we help that installer become a solar pro.

Aaron Nichols: That’s awesome. There’s definitely a lack of attention paid to DIYers and people who want to do off-grid stuff. Most often people have to just figure out piecemeal what’s going on with YouTube and blogs. It’s amazing to have someone serving that niche.

Deep Patel: Yeah, and I think with off-grid, it starts with a proper consultation. It’s not just, “Hey, just buy a kit.” We have to figure out what you are trying to power, how many hours a day do you want to run it. A proper analysis ensures these systems are sized to meet the goals of what the client needs. A lot of times what I see in the DIY space is people go out there, buy a bunch of stuff, get it shipped to their door, and then they’re like, “Okay, now how do I make this work for what I’m trying to do?”

Aaron Nichols: Right. And there’s potential danger. One of my first jobs in the industry after I got my NABCEP PV associate was installing solar on RVs, and I didn’t know what I was doing. The guy who owned the place really didn’t teach me much. I almost really hurt myself setting up a battery bank in an RV and basically got an arc flash that, luckily, I wasn’t very close to. But it’s very important that people are being safe doing this stuff.

Deep Patel: Exactly. You do have to be safe. You have to be cautious, read the manuals, and follow directions. There are certain technologies, like Enphase, that make it really easy and safe. I think a lot of our customers under our supervision can get it done safely and, most importantly, code compliant, because we do deliver a custom plan set to their particular project site with every kit. We actually draft a plan set for them, and everything is code compliant.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah, I think I might end up using you guys if people who work at Exact don’t want to help me design my own system, because eventually I’m going to be a DIY guy.

Deep Patel: Yeah, a few people in the industry have used us when it came to their own projects. They hired us, and we supplied them a kit and did all their services and got them all the way through as a DIYer. So you wouldn’t be the first one, Aaron.

Aaron Nichols: So why were you so interested to go more towards DIY and the kit route, and target that group of people, when so many people in the industry are racing towards utility scale?

Deep Patel: It’s a great question. When I first started, early on, I wanted to install my own project so I could learn. I’m a curious person. I had written research reports, gone to solar conferences, and met people, but I hadn’t actually installed one. I was living back at my parents’ house at the time, maybe 23 or 24, and I thought, “Why don’t I just install a system in the backyard here?” We had a lot of space for a ground mount. That was the first project I embarked on. If I could install one on my own, then I could help other people figure this out. But while going through the process, researching parts and pieces, I was confused, nervous, and anxious. Was I making the right decision? Solar panels cost a lot back then, too.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah, and probably way less knowledge available as well.

Deep Patel: Exactly. I was doing it through some people I knew in the industry that were guiding me. The hardest part was getting the approvals—the plan sets, the utility interconnection, getting the permit. I realized that was a big pain point. So when I finished my project and got it up and running myself, I realized there were probably a lot of people out there who want to do this on their own but just don’t have the information or the confidence to get through the permitting and interconnection process. But they have the trade skills. The actual job of installing isn’t that difficult if you have trade skills.

Aaron Nichols: Right. And then you learned how to solve that problem and started helping other people.

Deep Patel: Yeah, exactly. And utility scale, I just never had the experience there. It looks really cool to build those farms, but it requires a different skill set that I didn’t really understand or have the aptitude to do. But I knew I could do residential jobs.

Aaron Nichols: I’m excited to learn more about it as well, because I’m a behind-the-meter guy. I don’t know a lot about utility scale either. Deep, I ask everyone who comes onto the show the same closing question. Last year I spoke at my grandma’s 80th birthday party. As I was reflecting on that afterwards, I realized that 80 years meant she was born into a world where renewable energy, as we know it, didn’t even exist. The invention of PV wasn’t until 1954, and Jimmy Carter didn’t put solar panels on the White House till ‘79. Everything that’s happened to lower the price of solar and drive it down to being the cheapest source of power today has happened within my grandma’s lifetime. I like to ask each guest who is an expert in the solar industry: where do you think clean energy will be 80 years from now?

Deep Patel: Wow. 80 years. I think we’re just starting. The story of solar energy is a long one that goes back to 1954 when Bell Labs created the first silicon solar cell, and even beyond then in ancient times when people tried to harness the power of the sun. But now we’re actually getting started. I think the biggest thing making a difference is we’re going to have cheap and extremely efficient energy storage. We finally cracked the code on how to store electricity. That was the missing link in solar, and now it’s a reality. With LFP prices where they’re at right now, and solid-state lithium coming into play, and even fuel cells that can augment your solar and storage system, it completely provides that resiliency people need. I think eventually people can actually start disconnecting from the grid entirely, with their little fuel cell, solar, battery, and hybrid inverter.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah, we might see much more regional microgrids as well. We might not have these giant monopolies controlling the flow of electricity.

Deep Patel: Exactly. Community-based grids. Some of it will be on the blockchain where you can do peer-to-peer trading—sell extra power to your neighbor. It’s more power to the people rather than power to a big centralized utility. This is really going to democratize how electricity is bought and sold.

Aaron Nichols: That’s what I love so much about this, man. Just the chance to disrupt something so big and so entrenched, and imagining how interesting it’s going to be in 80 years.

Deep Patel: I think the future is really bright for our space, and I’m excited to be part of it and to work with folks like you to really create the change we’re seeking.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah, me too. The reason I’m in this space is because I spent so much time traveling in what is often called the developing world and just saw that there’s no plan for all the trash. If we can transition off of petroleum and more responsibly generate energy, we can go such a long way towards doing something about it.

Deep Patel: Absolutely. And these communities don’t have grids, they don’t have access to water or internet. It cuts them out of economic opportunity and they can never get ahead. But now with solar storage, Starlink, they can plug in and become part of the global society that they’ve been disenfranchised from. If we can scale this, it’s going to lower the price of the technology until people can just have power, internet, and water anywhere. That’s going to change the game.

Aaron Nichols: I know people hate on Starlink because of who owns it, but it’s the coolest product imaginable. My fiancee and I bought one earlier this year and took it everywhere this summer with just a 200-watt solar panel from Facebook marketplace, an off-brand battery bank, and a Starlink. I work remote and can work from anywhere. In rural Alaska too, a lot of indigenous people who normally couldn’t afford internet had Starlink as well.

Deep Patel: It just opens up a lot of possibilities. It’s one of those really societal changing technologies. It’s gotten really affordable as well now. They even have a five-dollar-a-month plan for limited amounts of data. It’s pretty wild how cost-effective it’s gotten.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah, I know. Well Deep, where can people find you online or otherwise if you do want to be found?

Deep Patel: You can find me on LinkedIn, Deep Patel at Gigawatt. And you can find us at gigawattinc.com or unbound solar.com. Look forward to hearing from anyone, I’m very accessible. Thanks again, Aaron, for having me on the show. It’s been a pleasure speaking with 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

Note: Apologies if you saw this go out on Monday and tried to watch the video. I accidentally sent it early. If you were waiting for the video, please enjoy!

What’s New:

Plug-in solar panels are cheap, easy to install, and massively popular in Europe. But as more states legalize them in the U.S., utilities and electrical experts are raising red flags about uniquely American safety hazards.

Why it Matters:

States like Utah, Virginia, Maryland, Maine, and Colorado have passed or are about to pass laws allowing consumers to bypass the complicated utility connection agreements usually required for rooftop solar.

On paper, this looks great. People who normally can’t save with solar, like renters, can just buy a kit, hang it on a balcony, and save money. Plug-in solar offers true “power to the people.” So why aren’t we seeing it roll out faster?

Utilities have successfully stalled similar bills in states like Georgia and Wyoming, citing the need to protect consumers and grid workers.

While advocates claim that utilities are just trying to protect their monopolies, there are some legitimate, documented dangers that we need to overcome before we can deploy plug-in solar in the U.S. I’m going to go through the biggest concerns in no particular order here.

The GFCI Issue:

According to a whitepaper by UL Solutions, backfeeding electricity into standard branch circuits can permanently damage Ground-Fault Circuit-Interrupter (GFCI) breakers and outlets.

If a GFCI fails, the circuit remains energized but loses its ability to protect against lethal shock hazards in wet locations like patios or kitchens.

“Significant concerns have been noted related to the misuse of GFCIs when backfed. This damage has resulted in GFCI circuitry failure... leaving the branch circuit unprotected from electric shock hazards.”

— UL Solutions Whitepaper

America’s Grid is Different Than Germany’s:

Advocates often point to Germany’s 1.2 million safe plug-in installations. However, the North American electrical grid is fundamentally different.

Germany uses a floating system with whole-house residual current detectors. The U.S. relies on circuit-level GFCI protection. This is not an impossible problem to overcome, but it’s a difficult one.

Lineworker Safety:

Utilities argue that during an outage, unregulated plug-in panels could continue to push electricity back onto the grid, creating a life-threatening shock hazard for utility lineworkers trying to restore power.

Shock Risk:

Plug-in solar kits are designed to back-feed the grid with a standard 120V electrical plug. That means that power is flowing from the panels to the outlet. Consumers are not used to this (every appliance you own pulls power out of the wall, not puts it in).

If the kits are not designed to shut off power the instant that they are unplugged, then someone could touch the prongs of the plug and shock themselves. Solar panels are always live. If they’re in the sun, they’re making power, so the inverter in a plug-in solar kit needs to be able to cut off power the second that it’s unplugged.

Overloaded Circuits & Fire Risks:

Unlike professional installations that use dedicated circuits, plug-in panels rely on consumer common sense. As any American knows, there’s a reason that your microwave says “please don’t put your head in here and turn it on” in the owner’s manual.

Common sense is uncommon. A homeowner could easily plug a 600-watt solar array into the same outdoor circuit powering a hot tub, risking electrical fires.

Overheating:

Because American circuits aren’t designed for two-way power flow, there’s a chance that plug-in kits could overheat wires and cause fires, depending on how close to the electrical panel they’re plugged in.

What’s next:

UL Solutions launched a testing and certification program for plug-in solar in January to address these hazards. Certifications are expected within months, but could take more than a year.

For those already using these kits, experts recommend buying a cheap GFCI outlet tester (they run around $10-$20) to ensure their home’s shock-protection systems haven’t been quietly fried by backfed solar power.

Sources:

Easy-to-use solar panels are coming, but utilities are trying to delay them

Bright Saver State Tracker

Clearing the way for plug-in solar

Why you should never invest in “plug-in” solar panels

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 Lisa Shulock, Director of Commercial Programs at the Philadelphia Energy Authority.

Lisa is a policy expert dedicated to proving that solar is a powerful tool for economic stability and poverty reduction (and not just for hippie tree-huggers).

Listen to this episode on:

* YouTube

* Apple Podcasts

* Spotify

Connect with Lisa on LinkedIn here.

Expect to learn:

* Why commercial landlords often hesitate to invest in rooftop solar.

* Why seasoned executives who know how to buy real estate still find solar proposals intimidating and difficult to compare.

* How changing state regulations in Pennsylvania could transform empty warehouse roofs into local clean power plants.

Quotes from the episode:

“For commercial property owners, procuring solar is something most companies have no experience with... It doesn’t usually reach the top of an executive’s priority list to figure out how to do it because they don’t know where to turn for guidance.” — Lisa Shulock

“80 years from now, I don’t think we’re going to be using fossil fuels any longer... the technologies we’re using now to convert the sun’s energy are going to be ubiquitous and incredibly inexpensive.” — Lisa Shulock

Transcript

Aaron Nichols: Lisa, there is so much available commercial real estate that we could put solar panels on. What do you think has held commercial solar back? Like, why don’t we see it on every warehouse in America?

Lisa Shulock: Aaron, that’s such a good question. And I think there’s a number of different reasons. One is, historically, solar has a reputation of being expensive and only for elites or tree huggers like myself. But that’s not true. And I think this is a perception problem that the industry is confronting—has gotten better—challenging that, but it’s still a legacy with solar. In fact, the program that my organization, the Philadelphia Energy Authority runs called Solarize Greater Philadelphia, in our program for homeowners, in the last few years when we started offering a low cost lease option, more than 80% of the contracts signed for solar on a homeowner’s roof were with low and moderate income homeowners. So we’re totally blasting that misperception, but that’s certainly one factor.

For commercial property owners, procuring solar—and this is true for residential as well, but for focusing on commercial, which is what I focus on—procuring solar is something most companies have no experience with. Like, they know how to buy office equipment, know, go buy a Xerox machine, they know how to do that. They need a vehicle, they know how to do that. If they haven’t done it at work, they’ve certainly done it at home. If they manage many, they certainly know how to lease or purchase buildings if that’s necessary. But very few people have experienced purchasing solar. And I think it’s kind of intimidating and it’s—doesn’t usually reach like the top of an executive’s priority list to figure out like, okay, if I wanna do this, how do I do it? Because they don’t know where to turn for guidance, I think.

There’s two more things I would want to say. One is that even if it does get to the top of somebody’s list, it’s not always easy to compare solar proposals. So different companies, different solar developers, solar installers may make different assumptions about how much electricity they think is going to be used over the course of the 25-year lifespan each year, or what kind of financing solutions are offered, or what the rate of increase of utility prices will be. So when you’re looking at solar, one company might be comparing it to a different price than another. And sometimes, although fortunately very infrequently and obviously not Exact Solar, there are some unscrupulous actors in the market. So I think that is an impact as well.

The program that we run that at again, Philadelphia Energy Authority in partnership with the Pennsylvania Solar Center, we’re addressing this problem by providing free technical assistance, including developing feasibility studies, distributing requests for proposals to solar developers, and then helping property owners to select the solar installer that provides the best value for them. So making that apples to apples comparison with the different proposals from solar developers. That’s one way we’re combating that particular issue.

And then lastly, and maybe most importantly, I’m not really sure what order I would put these in, that again, I’m speaking of commercial properties. Most are owned by a developer or an investor, and then it’s rented to tenants. And it’s usually the tenants that pay for their utilities. So, while installing solar reduces electricity costs for the tenant, the owner is the one that needs to recoup the cost of the solar investment. So you’ve got this mismatch between the financial incentive. Even when a property owner has a lease that allows them to pass along the cost of the solar investment to the tenant, those leases, excuse me, are usually significantly shorter than the lifespan of the solar. So there could be a period when the owner is still paying back the cost of purchasing solar and maybe they don’t have a tenant that they can pass the cost to. So that is a significant barrier to solar on commercial properties.

In Pennsylvania, we don’t have great financial incentives for solar. If you’re like me and you, when you travel and you, whether you’re driving over to New Jersey or up to New England and you look around for solar panels wherever you go, you’ll see that certain states have much more solar than we do in Pennsylvania. New Jersey has like all the same, you know, in terms of how much sun we get, it’s the same. What’s different is that some of the incentives are different in New Jersey. And even though it doesn’t feel like it right now, our commercial electricity rates are relatively low. They’re going up. We don’t want high electricity prices, of course, but higher prices do make the economics of solar pencil better. I mentioned a couple of the solutions to these problems. I can go into a lot more of them if you want me to, but that’s why we don’t see solar on every warehouse in every parking lot as much as I’d love to.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah, I like to joke that, you know, a lot of people will say we don’t want solar in our neighborhood because it’s ugly, but you know, it’s very hard to make the case that you’re going to make a commercial warehouse worse to look at by putting solar panels on.

Lisa Shulock: Yes, and I actually haven’t heard the ugly part before about solar. I’ve certainly heard it about wind turbines, but yeah.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah. Yeah, we deal with a lot of homeowners who say like, we don’t want it on the front of the house because we just don’t like the way it looks. We deal with that. And thank you, by the way, for just, I noticed that you added that little caveat. You said there was a lot of unscrupulous actors, obviously not Exact Solar. So thank you for putting that in. I’m very—

Lisa Shulock: Mmm. Some. Right. And I think there’s fewer in the market now. I think it’s a more competitive market. When we first launched Solarize in Philadelphia back in 2016, 2017, in the residential space, there were a lot of companies that were taking advantage of customers. We don’t see that nearly as much anymore. And I think that’s in part because we’ve been able to grow the market working with Exact Solar and some of the other Solarize partners in the Philadelphia region.

Aaron Nichols: So going back to business owners, why do you think, like when we’re talking about the education gap, the knowledge gap, and also the lack of incentives for them to spread the word, I mean it seems like if a business owner does go solar and they dramatically lower their operating costs, they’re probably less inclined to tell another business owner about it just because of competition than say like, Jim would be if he put solar on his house and he lowers his bills and he tells all his neighbors. I think that’s one aspect. I also know that business owners are just much harder to get in touch with, but what do you think the average business owner doesn’t know about how much going solar can actually help them?

Lisa Shulock: Yeah, I think a little bit back to what I spoke about earlier, I think most businesses don’t know that solar can really help their bottom line. And it’s interesting that you think that maybe they would be reluctant to share with their competitors. Maybe. But I also think that I certainly—like I think there’s lots of associations where best practices are shared. I’m not sure that it’s not like it’s an industry secret that solar can help reduce the bottom line. I think they also don’t know that it is affordable and that there are financing products that make it possible to go solar. And I certainly don’t need to tell you this, Aaron, but I think one of the most significant things about solar for anybody who has to pay for electric utilities is that it stabilizes and makes your electricity costs predictable and stable for the next 25 to 30 years. You’re hedging on the electricity market and you know whatever you’re paying to pay back a loan that you’ve taken out or if you’re paying a third party leasing company or paying through a third party like a power purchase agreement, you know what that cost is going to be every single year. We have no idea what electricity rates are going to be 20 years from now, no less, just one or two years from now. So it gives you predictability and stability. I think that is probably even if in some cases, maybe somebody would be paying a little bit more now than they might to PECO or to another utility where they are, but what they can be guaranteed is it’s gonna be a better rate than at some point soon in the future.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah, and that’s certainly why I love solar, is just the resilience, the predictability, and the fact that it gives power to the people, literally and figuratively. Now that you’ve shared a little bit of your wisdom and we’ve just kind of jumped in to the conversation, will you introduce yourself and talk about some of the work that you do?

Lisa Shulock: Of course. So I’m Lisa Shulock. I am Director of Commercial Programs at the Philadelphia Energy Authority. I’ve been in this role for about seven years. So PEA is an organization that most people have never heard of. We work in multiple sectors. And our mission is to use clean energy as a tool for positive economic impact. So we support the city of Philadelphia in procuring clean energy for its own use by entering into long-term power purchase agreements for solar. We recently did a very neat—we replaced every single street light in the city of Philadelphia, reducing the city’s electricity use by close to 50% for their streetlights, not total. So that—municipal services—is one piece. I’ve mentioned the residential programs that we work on, some of them. And my role is focusing on supporting commercial property owners and helping them access capital to invest in clean energy.

The program that I’m particularly excited about right now is one that is funded by two different local foundations, the William Penn Foundation and the Green Family Foundation have funded us and the Pennsylvania Solar Center, which works statewide. And we are providing these free technical services to commercial property owners to help them understand the benefits and the costs of going solar. So I spoke about that briefly before. I started my career many years ago in energy policy on Capitol Hill. I’ve done many different things in the interim and kind of made a full circle back to clean energy and sustainability in the last 10 to 15 years. And I’m just so thrilled to have ended up at the Philadelphia Energy Authority, which is doing work that is mission-driven, supporting the community of Philadelphia and beyond. So, delighted to be here.

Aaron Nichols: What are some of your favorite projects that you’ve been involved with? Like some of the ones that stick in your mind as great stories. I think we told the story on this channel a few weeks ago of our Habitat for Humanity project that I believe y’all were involved with. But what are some of your favorite stories of projects you’ve gotten across the finish line, I mean, that we were involved in or not?

Lisa Shulock: Yeah, well, I’ll start with one that Exact Solar was involved with. I wasn’t involved in it in a major way, but I appreciate that Exact Solar has been working hard with houses of worship to assist them in going solar. Last August it was, I had an opportunity to visit Wrightstown Friends meeting in Newtown, Pennsylvania. Exact Solar installed solar for them and I, you know, working with houses of worship and more generally nonprofits can be a very, very long sales cycle. Typically because they’re often doing capital campaigns to fund the solar or other improvements that they’re making. And I appreciate how patient Exact Solar and some of its business development folks were in working with Wrightstown as well as other houses of worship. So it was cool to see the solar on their roof. They also installed ground source heat pump technology—they’ve dramatically reduced their reliance on grid power. And I think the economics worked for them, especially because they, for the most part, I think did a capital campaign and raised funds from their members. And it’s part of their mission to reduce their carbon footprint. So that was a pretty cool project.

There’s also another fun project that... and let me just say that my involvement with that project was relatively simple. It was after the solar had been installed and after the geothermal had been installed, they were seeking the direct pay or elective pay from the treasury as a part of the investment tax credit. And I helped get them heading in the right direction and filling out the right forms and talking to the right people so that they could get their check from the US treasury, which they did. One other project that is small but really meaningful is Exact Solar installed a small system on a greenhouse at a Spirit Charter School, I believe, is that correct?

Aaron Nichols: Yeah, they’re called CHP Charter Schools now. They renamed themselves, yeah.

Lisa Shulock: Okay, CHP Charter Schools. It’s a relatively small system, but it is a teaching tool. It’s on a greenhouse that is used by the faculty at the school, and they’ve integrated teaching about the solar system into the curriculum, and I think that’s pretty cool. And again, it was probably more of a passion project for Exact Solar than a moneymaker, I’m guessing.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah, so that project is near and dear to all of our hearts, the one you’re talking about. And that’s actually the one that ended up getting me a full-time job here, because I was freelance back when we first started putting that together. And then it was seeing my excitement about it that made the owners of Exact want to bring me on full-time. It’s one of the things I love about working at Exact—I’m not trying to brag, but on all of the sales calls, someone brings up nonprofits. Someone brings up how we can better serve nonprofits. Everyone gets so excited about getting solar on schools and doing those really interesting projects that make great stories and make—I mean, they turn into great optics for the company—but we just love to serve the community.

Lisa Shulock: Yeah, and that’s it’s really clear. I actually knew the—one of the owners, Doug Edwards, owner of Exact Solar. I actually knew Doug in his prior job working for a subsidiary or an affiliate of Trane doing large energy efficiency projects for commercial properties. And I met him because he was working on a project for a Philadelphia building that ended up using a financing tool that we support in Philly called C-PACE, Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy. And I love that Doug has the experience and background of understanding how commercial real estate works and where solar might fit in and has taken that experience and brought it to Exact Solar, which is pretty cool.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah. He also just has so much energy. That’s one of the coolest things is he’s just like, he’s an energizer bunny. He’s a creature of continuation. I don’t know, the man can just go and go and go. So it really makes it energizing and easy to get fired up.

Lisa Shulock: Yes. Yes. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. For sure.

Aaron Nichols: Now, I want to bring it back to what you were saying earlier about driving through other states and seeing all the solar and how other states have way more solar. I recently learned something—this was last summer at the American Solar Energy Society’s conference. One of the speakers brought up that 70% of the locked-in carbon reduction we’ve seen since the turn of the century has actually come as a direct result of state and local policy, which was really inspiring to me because I love local community and I love local action. I think that especially now when federal policy, especially for clean energy, is much more of a mess, it’s important that we band together in our communities and we realize that we have much more power than we think we do. And jumping off of that, I know that Pennsylvania is often last or close to last in renewable energy deployment, and you’re basically Pennsylvania’s solar royalty at this point. So I would love to hear you say like—

Lisa Shulock: I’m not taking that crown, but thank you.

Aaron Nichols: Why is that and what needs to be done to fix it?

Lisa Shulock: First of all, I hadn’t ever heard that 70% before. I’m just like, my brain’s starting to go, okay, so what would that be? It’s probably local building codes. Like, because one of the things we—one of the reasons that electricity prices had been flat for so many years, even though we’ve experienced population growth and economic growth, is because we’ve gotten more efficient at utilizing energy. And so that, you know, better building codes is one key reason as well as utility incentives. So I’m sure there’s many other factors, but I’m going to put that aside for a moment and get back to your question, which is—first of all, I need to be careful that I don’t get myself or my organization in trouble. So I’m going to speak at a pretty high level about this.

There’s a couple of initiatives that the solar industry and solar advocates have been promoting in Harrisburg. I think I’ll mention two of them. One is that some of your listeners may know about the Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard. And that is what creates this market for what’s called Renewable Energy Credits or Solar Renewable Energy Credits, SRECs or RECs, depending on what you’re speaking about. The Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard or AEPS has been stagnant since like 2017 or something like that and requires that only a half of a percent of all electricity generation in Pennsylvania be from renewable energy—or maybe it’s from solar and it’s slightly higher for all renewables. Please don’t quote me on this.

Aaron Nichols: Well, if I remember right, it was also mandated back in 2008 or something like that. And then the target of half a percent was met back in 2021 and hasn’t been updated, right?

Lisa Shulock: Thank you, that sounds more accurate. So one of the ways to incentivize more solar is to increase the mandated percentage of renewables on the grid in Pennsylvania, especially renewable that is generated in-state. Part of Governor Shapiro’s package of energy solutions includes increasing and improving the portfolio standards. So that’s one way in which it creates a better price and more predictable price for renewable energy credits, which can then be monetized, which helps reduce the total cost of solar for somebody who’s investing in solar.

The other, and this is one that I love to talk about, is enabling something that’s called Community Solar. I’m not sure if you’ve spoken about this on your podcasts in the past, but essentially community solar is a way to crowdsource investing in a particular solar project. For people, for individuals, let’s say who want to invest in solar, but can’t—like they rent where they live or they own homes that aren’t suitable for solar, too much shade, not an appropriate roof—I mean, there’s a lot of homes in Philadelphia that are totally appropriate for solar. Most of the row home stock in Philly is great for solar, but there’s certainly many houses also that have like steep slopes on their roofs, maybe old slate roofs, and it isn’t suitable for solar. Those folks who want to invest in solar could basically buy a subscription to a solar project that is not where they live. I mentioned earlier the challenge of commercial building owners not being able to install—or the financial challenge of the mixed, uneven incentives—community solar solves that problem, especially for warehouses, for example. So a warehouse owner could install solar on their large roof and they don’t have to be dependent on a tenant to buy the electricity from them, they can sell the solar to a subscriber. So in states where we see community solar enacted, we see much more solar on these large, particularly warehouses that have like not a lot of equipment on the roofs that are really great for solar. And also those buildings don’t necessarily have high electricity demand unless they’re like cold storage. And then that solar can be distributed to the community. So I love that as a solution and it’s not gonna cost the Commonwealth a penny. It’s not gonna cost electricity rate payers a penny. It’s really just a matter of changing regulation. So that’s a solution I’m very fond of.

Aaron Nichols: And now as we’re winding down here, there’s a story that I want to hear. This one’s basically just for me and I hope the audience likes it. But as I was researching for this episode, I saw that you had a profile on Green Building United that says that you worked with the Northern Cheyenne tribe in Montana through the Indigenized Energy Initiative to develop a comprehensive solar program on the reservation. I’ve had a little bit of experience like that. I got to spend the summer of 2023 working in indigenous villages in rural Alaska, which was an experience that completely changed my life. And I would just love to hear you tell a bit of that story.

Lisa Shulock: Yeah, thanks for asking about it. It was a roughly a year and a half that I was doing some consulting—was a very special time. The Northern Cheyenne Reservation is located in southeastern Montana and they had received the Department of Energy Award to install solar on residential properties. And it was one of the first awards of this kind, especially for—in particular for a Native American tribe. So they hired Indigenized Energy to assist with the implementation. And I happen to know one of the founders of Indigenized Energy from when we worked together at Penn State. The other founders included Otto Braidedhair, a member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, and Cody Two Bears, who’s a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation in North Dakota.

It was a fantastic project because a key component was growing a local workforce that would be used to construct the solar systems. So part of the work we were doing was designing systems that could be easily replicated—and basically you take the same system and bring it to every single house that was getting solar. And one of the things we were able to do, because this was a rural area and houses were pretty spread out, is there was a standard 10 kilowatt array that was ground mounted. So you didn’t have to worry about roofs. You didn’t have to worry about the quality of the construction of the house. They all had yards and with wide open spaces. For anybody here who’s been in the Northern Plains states, one thing they have is lots of wide open views. Like the sunrises and the sunsets are just extraordinary. Anyway, I digress.

Creating jobs and also dramatically transforming the lives of people who are able to get solar. And our priority was to put solar—the homes that were selected were ones that typically had elderly people. In some cases, we were able also to pair it with storage, with batteries. So we were prioritizing those with medical equipment that couldn’t do without electricity. So that was really cool. As is true, unfortunately, for many reservations in the country, poverty rates are really high. And solar is a really powerful tool to help reduce poverty in those communities.

There was going to be a huge boost in influx of funding to the Northern Cheyenne Tribe as well as many other tribes from the Solar for All program, which was part of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Unfortunately, the current administration has rescinded the funding and it’s currently tied up in the courts. By the way, Solar for All was also going to bring funding to almost every state and many tribal communities. Pennsylvania was supposed to receive $156 million to subsidize solar for low and moderate income households. But to wrap up about being in Southeastern Montana, it was really powerful for me. Personally, I had never really spent time in rural communities, certainly had never spent time with native folks. They call themselves Indians usually. It was very humbling and very powerful. And I would say I learned way more than they learned from me.

Aaron Nichols: That’s usually how it goes, yeah. Yeah, I’ve been lucky enough to spend time in a lot of communities like that around the world and you do always walk away very humbled. So I ask everyone who comes on the show the same closing question, Lisa, and it has to do with the fact that last year I spoke at my grandma’s 80th birthday party. And after that, I was putting together a LinkedIn post about that. And I realized that the through line was that 80 years means that my grandma was born into a world where what we call renewable energy did not exist in 1945. The only way we knew how to make energy was to just drive around until we found burnable things to dig them up, transport them to a location, burn them, and send the energy outwards. Solar PV cells weren’t even invented until 1954 and then were used to power some satellites as they got better and better, but were incredibly expensive for a long time. Solar thermal came along and that was put on the White House by Jimmy Carter and then pulled down by Reagan and that all of that drama went on through the 20th century and then in the 21st century we’ve seen solar go from a niche luxury item as you mentioned at the beginning to the cheapest power source in the world. That whole story happened within my grandma’s lifetime and so if you’re going to play us out just moonshot to end the show like everyone else has done who’s come on—what do you think energy looks like 80 years from now knowing that it’s changed that much within the last 80 years?

Lisa Shulock: I want to take one issue with what you said—while solar energy hasn’t been around in its current form, hydropower has been around for a long time, which is a renewable energy source. So—and in some cases wreaking havoc on the environment and other cases working very compatibly with the natural environment. But I think 80 years from now, I don’t think we’re going to be using fossil fuels any longer. And I think the technologies that we’re using now to convert the sun’s energy to our lives are going to be ubiquitous and they’re going to be incredibly inexpensive. We’re going to see, I believe, a dramatic increase in distributed energy, but also a strong grid that’s resilient and reliable. And I’m sticking with it. I think that’s my optimistic view, but it’s also the one that gives me hope. And I think we, as you’ve pointed out, in just the last 25 years, we’ve seen an incredible transformation. And as you also pointed out, it’s now the cheapest form of energy and will continue to get less and less expensive and newer and newer technologies are going to make it the only source that we use to power our lives.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah, it’s gonna get more efficient too.

Lisa Shulock: Mm-hmm, absolutely, absolutely.

Aaron Nichols: Well, Lisa, where do you like to be found if you do want to be found online or otherwise?

Lisa Shulock: I love to be found. You can find me on LinkedIn at Lisa Shulock, S-H-U-L-O-C-K, or you can email me, LSHULOCK at philaenergy.org.

Aaron Nichols: Thank you so much, and for everyone listening, this has been This Week in Solar.

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

We decided to try something new for this episode! I invited Anders Alexander to give commentary on this developing story, but kept it under 5 minutes. If you like this format, let us know in the comments, and we’ll do more of them!

You can listen to this episode here, or on:

* YouTube

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What’s New:

Four GOP House members have introduced the American Energy Dominance Act, a bill designed to revive renewable energy and efficiency tax incentives that were phased out by 2025’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA).

Why it matters:

The OBBBA’s jarring rollback of federal tax credits created market uncertainty in clean energy industries, stalled projects across the country, and forced almost $35 billion in in-progress projects to be cancelled.

Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick, Mike Lawler, Max Miller, and Mike Carey partnered with North America’s Building Trades Unions to draft the legislation.

The bill removes accelerated expiration dates for commercial solar, clean hydrogen, and building efficiency tax credits to secure domestic supply chains and protect union jobs.

Unfortunately, the bill does nothing to extend or reinstate 25D, the tax credit for residential solar installations.

Anders Alexander weighs in below:

Transcript:

Aaron Nichols Anders, you messaged me on LinkedIn in response to a post I had put up about the four Republican representatives who have proposed that we extend the commercial tax credits rather than phasing them out as the one big beautiful bill would have done. One of them is actually Exact Solar’s representative, Fitzpatrick, who was one of

two no votes on the one big beautiful bill. Now know you had some commentary, you messaged me, you were like, I have something to add on this, and so I decided to bring you on for a news roundup on a Friday morning. So let’s hear what you have to say.

Anders Alexander Yeah, I think that extending them is brilliant.

consistency, the market still has a lot of growth, a lot of building to do. But to be clear, when it comes to the residential side, you’re still talking about third party owned solar, which has a really great place in the market. It’s really what the market has grown around. You have good longer term guarantees, easy to participation in utility programs, you know, all that’s great. And we lost 25 D, which accomplishes honestly all the same things just in a different way.

Aaron Nichols Just really, really quickly for anyone who’s listening who’s not in the industry, what is 25D?

Anders Alexander Yeah, 25D being the tax credit specifically for you own your home, you own your solar, you may have gotten a loan, but 25D is ownership. 48E is third party owned leases and PPAs. And so when you look across the country, some states are really heavy on ownership and loans. And so when you have tax credits for one financing type for not another, it’s not like it’s evenly spread throughout the United States. You have basically a lot of the

Midwest,

a lot of the rural areas, the Northwest, that, you know, we are almost five months into not having 25D and only having 48E and the third party financing options have not rushed into those markets and probably won’t long term when you look at utility prices and what they need to compete with, but also just the availability of the products. And so I think when you have both, you have a more balanced market that feeds the whole country.

But as I wrote to you before, a step in the right direction is the step in the right direction and we’ll always welcome that.

Aaron Nichols Yeah, so to succinctly try to phrase it, if this is going to be equitable and be a win for the solar industry, we need to make sure that we’re extending the residential tax credit alongside the commercial tax credit. And as it stands, it’s only the commercial tax credit that would be extended by this legislation.

Anders Alexander Exactly. And if you would say that, well, yes, there’s going to be holes in the markets when there’s only a two year time frame and extending this will mean that, you know, 48E and this third party ownership will extend to the whole country, you know, not necessarily. And the other thing about like ownership and loans, it’s very recognizable way of buying things for your home, for participating in utility programs. And so once again, it just creates, yes, a more balanced, equitable market spread throughout the

United States. And when I was looking at the data, just to remind myself this morning of where TPO is and where cash ownership is, you know, really has to do with the rural divide with the cities. And so honestly, I live rurally. And so that’s a lot of what you’re doing is you’re basically, it looks on the map, like you’re really just reducing more access in the rural areas and kind of leaving the rural areas behind. And I’m from a city, but I’ve been living in rural areas for years.

now and between internet and other services we really do leave the rural part of our country behind and 25D is just a real clear way to make sure that they’re included and so that’s why you know once again both are great different types of homes different types of utility programs but when you put them together I think you get a really strong policy for the country.

Aaron Nichols Yeah, I grew up in a small town and if there’s one thing I hate, it’s big city people making decisions for small towns. So thank you for coming on today, Andish. It has been wonderful to have you. For everyone listening, that’s been This Week in Solar and we will see you next week.

Sources:

House Republicans introduce bill to extend renewables tax credits

Republican legislators seek to restore clean energy tax credits

Republican lawmakers propose bill to preserve commercial solar tax credits

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 Laura Gutierrez, seasoned solar professional and co-founder of SolarSync.

Laura shares her journey from journalist and yoga teacher to the front lines of international solar business development.

They dive into what solar companies do wrong when communicating with homeowners and what the U.S. market can learn from the necessity-driven clean energy innovation happening across Latin America and the Caribbean.

You can listen to this episode here, or on:

* YouTube

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* Spotify

Connect with Laura on LinkedIn here.

Expect to Learn:

* How local solar installers can actually foster 25-year relationships by solving the orphan system crisis.

* Why extreme weather and grid instability in Latin America and the Caribbean have turned solar into a non-negotiable tool for community resilience.

Quotes:

“We measure our industry in megawatts, but customers measure us in watts... our reputation is being measured on uptime and what is actually being delivered to the light switch.”

— Laura Gutierrez

“Installers should shift their mind from ‘new solar and on to the next’ to how they can cultivate this relationship. You are in energy management; there is a lot more for you to capture from that customer over a lifetime.”

— Laura Gutierrez

Transcript

Aaron Nichols: Laura, when we spoke before recording, you told me that we measure our industry in megawatts, but customers measure us in watts. It’s a great quote, and I would love to hear you elaborate on it.

Laura Gutierrez: Yeah, well because you know during my time in solar distribution we would see you know what were the gigawatts sold, the megawatts sold, how much you know equipment was being sold and out there but when the solars call you Hey, the inverters or something’s going wrong with the system, know, the homeowners are upset that they’re not thinking about megawatts or gigawatts. They’re thinking, hey, my light switch isn’t working or I’m paying X amount of kilowatt hours that, you know, I wasn’t supposed to be paying on my bill. You know, they’re not looking at megawatts, gigawatts. They’re counting on the watts that they’re paying. So even though as company, we think, OK, our growth was projected on the megawatts. our reputation and what we’re delivering is still being measured on watts delivered or on know uptime of these watts so it’s a macro but the micro level is still so important and and every

Aaron Nichols: Mm-hmm. Yeah, you mentioned before we were recording that we’re thinking nationally and we’re forgetting about the local. Did I paraphrase that right?

Laura Gutierrez: No, that’s exactly where my thoughts are. We’re thinking about how can we advance global renewable energy targets and deployment, but we forget that it’s still happening at a micro level, at a regional level. It’s how many homes went solar in this community, in the one next door. Okay, what about the city 20 minutes north of it, or the city 20 minutes and it’s out of it. this is still happening at a very slow boots on the ground level and it’s still individual homeowners, individual families that are saying yes to the idea, that are saying yes to the solution. So we still have to think about every single watt. Promise needs to be delivered and broken promises not only you know affect that single homeowner, but these are business models that rely a lot on referrals. So one unhappy customer is going to tell their neighbor or their sibling or their family members and once the word starts getting around that, I you know my solar doesn’t work. or something went on with my solar, or they told me that I was gonna have savings and I’m still paying double bills. The word gets around fast and installers still need to deliver on their promises so that they can continue to get referrals. And coming from door-to-door sales, coming from working from one of the larger installers in the US, referrals.

Aaron Nichols: Amen. For anyone listening, welcome back to This Week in Solar. As always, I’m your host, Aaron Nichols, the storytelling and policy specialist here at Exact Solar in Newtown, Pennsylvania. And I’m very excited about my guest today, Laura Gutierrez, because when I made a post on LinkedIn and just celebrated the women who have come onto This Week in Solar so far, which it still amazes me that anyone wants to come onto a brand new show. And when I asked... who, which women in the industry I should interview next, there were four people that messaged me and said, you have to talk to Laura Gutierrez. No one else had as many responses or as many people pointing to them as someone awesome. So I’m very excited that I’m meeting you, Laura. And would you like to just spend some time introducing yourself?

Laura Gutierrez: Please. Well, first of all, Erin, thank you so much. I’m more than humbled that industry colleagues or friends were kind enough to recommend me. I still sometimes, you know, think, my god, six years in solar, wow, what a long time. But yeah, I guess I started six years ago. I was telling you a little earlier. My background was in journalism when I moved to the US pre-pandemic. I had a full-blown yoga business. I was teaching at hotels in Miami, different yoga studios, private classes online. I had a full-blown wellness business going for me. The pandemic hit. I was, you know, my God, what’s gonna happen? I need to find a new way to develop income. At the same time, I had started my master’s degree in sustainability. And you know, casually one of my good friends was working in the solar industry and said, hey, you should come learn about solar. I think you would really like this. And you know, I wasn’t not only intrigued because I was doing, you know, hundreds of sun salutations a day. So I was, you know, thinking about solar and then think, how can I bring this energy into my life? And someone says, hey, you should really think about solar. You should come and learn about this. And I’m like, well, okay. Yeah, this sounds great. So they invited me to this trip to Texas. Midland, Texas. Midland Odessa. know, small place, oil town in Texas. And you know, this is my first trip. I don’t know really much about solar besides the clean energy and you know, it’s free energy.

Aaron Nichols: you

Laura Gutierrez: I go and you know, what’s this all about? So take my trip. I’m out there, you know, chilly Texas, December, and suddenly this blizzard hits. my God, power’s out, nobody has power, thousands of homeowners, what’s happening? know, it’s Texas, it’s hot, what is this blizzard? Everything is frozen, nothing is working. So I got to see it like real time. What is the impact of, you know, having solar, having backup power and how it can... either improve homeowners’ lives or really put them in a really uncomfortable spot. I think the communities were out of power for more than a week in some instances. So that was really a key moment of like, wow, this really has the power to impact a lot of homes and a lot of families. So I was like, wow, this isn’t really... maybe it’s just something that can bring income to my life for a while, this is something that is huge. So I went back to Florida and I’m like, okay, I really think that this is something that we need to bring to our community. And of course, know, Florida being in a hurricane zone, we’re always also in these moments where we need to have... Community resilience we need to have backup power for hurricanes for storms and and that’s kind of where it all started so I went from working in Door-to-door sales and then you know escalated got into solar distribution and ultimately that led me to to start my own business and And that’s kind of where where I’m at today

Aaron Nichols: I love non-traditional paths. It’s always just, I mean, I got really excited when you told me that story before we started recording because as anyone listening to this show knows, I fell into solar because two circus girls that I met on the beach in Ecuador invited me to knock doors with them.

Laura Gutierrez: Thanks, all.

Aaron Nichols: and I’m now talking to major news outlets and trying to represent the industry and it’s just amazing seeing someone like you who didn’t follow a traditional path. We also have yoga teaching in common. you’re the first person I’ve met who has kind of a similar story to how I got into the industry, which is amazing.

Laura Gutierrez: in. Let’s some sea we belong.

Aaron Nichols: We do, or yeah, we’re just fiery enough to make our own space here.

Laura Gutierrez: That’s a beautiful way to put it. And honestly for me, given the years, what keeps me here is the purpose. You’re really helping people. You’re really doing something to advance clean energy and doing it in a responsible and ethical way.

Aaron Nichols: Totally.

Laura Gutierrez: That’s what I think is going to be the most important thing. The industry is changing so much. Installers are working with so many different variables. The rules are changing almost on a monthly basis. If you stick to the reason why you’re doing this, why you believe in it, the path is always going to be rocky, but there’s always going to be a north star that will drive you there.

Aaron Nichols: Right. And I know that you’ve since ended up working with a lot of service customers. And as we both know, especially having come from door to door, there’s been a dark side to the solar industry in the last few years. And there’s been just companies that didn’t set expectations well or installed something and then vanished, leaving people with something that didn’t quite work on their roofs. And... I think that there’s something that is often missed. I’m very lucky that I work for a really established, fantastic company that’s been around for 20 years, but I think there’s something that is often missed in the initial conversation where we don’t quite set the expectations with a homeowner or business owner about what service is gonna look like or realistically what’s gonna happen. So why do you think we haven’t been so good at setting service expectations upfront as an industry.

Laura Gutierrez: I think a few things contribute to that. One is that people, well, many people could have sold the idea that you put the solar on the roof, it’s going to be there 25 years, 30 years, you forget about it, and then it’s going to be a problem 30 years from now. But it’s like a pool. When people put a pool in their house, they have a pool boy, right? You have someone that comes every 30 days, every 45 days to check the chlorine, check the levels to check if you know if the water is still good if the if the motors going well you know you still need a service that you don’t just put a pool and forget about it and okay you know so solar is like that you know you have wire you have optimizers that can fail micro inverters you know these are these are technologies that either have firmware updates or you know many things can go wrong. it’s not really something that you just slap on the roof and forget about it. So I think that a lot of these companies saw that the growth was increasing deployment quarter after quarter. You they had to keep these investors happy and you know, you can’t just install and forget about it. So the service part wasn’t sold or wasn’t communicated at the beginning. And I think a lot of people weren’t expecting that maybe someone has to come out, take a look at it every year, every two years to see the small module level electronics, is everything working well? Are the connections still working? There’s a lot of things that... that could happen that are not seen because it’s on the roof. So you need to have your solar pool boy comment and check out your infrastructure, especially, you know, these are systems that were promised to have uptime and deliver value and savings for at least 25 years. So I think it wasn’t communicated initially. And now, you know, we’ve had systems that have been deployed 15, 10 years ago. that are now starting to see, okay, well, something’s up with the roof, you know, they’re checking their app, it’s not working, and the installer went out of business, or they’re not there anymore, so who do these people call? They’re paying two bills, they were supposed to have savings, now I’m paying my FPL bill, but I’m also paying my solar bill, and they don’t know who to call, and this can cause, you know, your extreme... anger and know despair and there’s not a lot of people that are focused out there solving this problem and you know picking up the phone when these homeowners don’t really have anywhere to go.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah, do you, so I think we probably need to think of it more like an appliance, right? More like a refrigerator. Like you buy a refrigerator, you buy a washing machine with the understanding that it’s gonna make your life better, but there’s a chance that it could break. And if that happens, like someone will come and fix it, especially if you’re still under warranty.

Laura Gutierrez: I think that is beautifully said. Especially because, you know, this is supposed to last 25 years. Like your agreements, your lease agreement, your loan agreement, you you’re paying for this infrastructure for 25 years. Someone needs to take a look at it. Someone needs to make sure that... it’s delivering what it promised so that you can actually see the savings and you can actually enjoy reducing your carbon footprint because it’s not worth anything if it’s on your roof and you’re not receiving the benefits. And what’s most important is not only that it works but that you continue to have the homeowners trust. And I think what this industry has you know, kind of drop the ball on is maintaining the homeowner or the business owners trust in what they bought or what they signed up for. And making sure that it works is part of that.

Aaron Nichols: Red. So do you think that installers maybe need to sell service plans upfront instead of just saying, just call me and I’ll fix it? Or what do you think the future of service needs to look like?

Laura Gutierrez: I think, yes, I think that customers, well installers, need to offer service as something that needs to be done. So when you saw, you know, in the past what I saw a lot was that, yeah, sign up for your lease or sign up for your solar, you know, you’re gonna have free service for 25 years. But free service, you know, if they’re not incentivized to have a continuous service business, they’re incentivized to get, you know, new solar on the roof, a new project. That’s how they’re seeing that they’re gaining revenue and, you know, they’re advancing towards their goals. You know, going back to fix whatever was, you know, done a year ago or two years ago, three years ago, there was no really incentive there for them to actually want to pursue and keep this business model alive. So I think that if we reimagine the business model, and you know, of course we want new solar, that’s the only way that we’re gonna get to our targets. We’re gonna continue to grow the industry. But there’s a lot of opportunity in these service deserts. And you can have your same business and have these different revenue streams and it’s only gonna help you get to a healthier business. So if we communicate these things upfront and say, okay, well, my service isn’t gonna be free. Maybe I’m gonna come out there once a year. Maybe you’re gonna get, you’re gonna pay a small fee monthly or bi-monthly or you can be creative with how you wanna create these service plans, but. There’s a value in someone looking at your system. There’s a value in someone at the company is making sure that your uptime is there if they get an alert. So there’s a lot of value and a lot of revenue opportunities that installers are maybe overlooking. And I think that maintaining that trust, you’re in energy management. There’s a lot more that if you continue to harvest that relationship, there’s a lot more for you to capture from that customer, especially for a 25 year, for your lifetime. You you can get creative. Well, maybe, you know, the natural plugin is maybe now they need help with your HVAC, or maybe they want to get an EV charger, or maybe they’re okay, I didn’t want a battery at the beginning, but I need a battery now because I realized that the last three years we’ve been hit with three hurricanes. So. installer should shift their mind from new solar and on to the next but how can I cultivate this relationship and how can I continue to foster it so that I can still be there, be the person of choice. Hey something’s not looking right can you come get someone out there? Okay well the installer is going to be incentivized to go and send someone fast because they still have recurring revenue and they’re still you know getting incentive from this customer and not just offering that relationship for free for the next 25, 30 years. So if we can get more creative and we can really think about, okay, let’s get more solar deployed, but let’s make sure that the existing infrastructure is really working and how I can continue to have this relationship for 25 years. you can get so much more from this customer relationship. And I think that’s what we’re focusing on.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah, and I mean, obviously if you have monthly revenue coming in, it’s almost like insurance where you have a pool of money to deal with issues as they come up and obviously not everyone’s system is gonna break at the same time. So as we’re dealing with... I mean, in the last couple of years, we’ve seen the collapse of some pretty major national installers that left a lot of homeowners without people to service their systems. As we’re seeing things like that, installers growing really big, really fast, and then not being able to fulfill their promises to people, how can we, like how can I, as someone who works for a great local installer, how can companies like us just rebuild trust in solar across the country?

Laura Gutierrez: I think we need to acknowledge first of all, you know, where we might have dropped the ball. as an industry and you know what we can do to fix it immediately is first we gotta get those systems back on uptime we need to send someone out there we need to see you know help them deal with if this is an RMA issue like we need us boots on the ground and really listen to these people who are hurting you know they gave you they gave the industry a vote of confidence and they put money they you know signed up for a loan they’re in it you know We need to help them first. We need to build the trust and we need to say, okay, you know, this is a infrastructure that you’ve invested in for 30 years. It’s almost like it’s alive. You know, you need to look at it. You need to take care of it. So I think being honest about where if it was your company, if it was one that you picked up the project from, we need to be honest about like, okay, what’s really going on here and really just go out of our way and do that extra mile to make sure we build a happy customer again, because they’re gonna refer you. and they’re gonna talk to someone, you know, hey, I didn’t know and someone referred you to me, four different people referred to me. So imagine the power of a homeowner who is hurt, who feels, you know, cheated. I don’t know, they can feel many things and you change that storyline for them, it’s just opens so many doors. And I think that’s what we have to do.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah. So just do good work.

Laura Gutierrez: Just do good work, make sure the solar is working and make sure, you know, a customer doesn’t have to chase you down. We get calls. I’ve been chasing six months, seven months, eight months since one of my microinverters failed. Nobody’s picking up the phone. You pick up the phone, show your face, talk to people, be there, you know, that’s what we got to do.

Aaron Nichols: Right. Keep your promises. So, to take the conversation in another direction, one thing that I want to make sure I ask you about, because you have the incredible gift to be bilingual and to have your feet into different cultures, which is something I’m very, very jealous of. I wish I had grown up speaking another language. And I’m interested... Because you’ve also worked to deploy solar across Latin America, I’m interested what the markets are, what’s alike and what’s different in those markets and what can we learn from Latin America.

Laura Gutierrez: I think... Necessity drives innovation in very different ways. What maybe drives people in the Caribbean is not necessarily what drives them in Latin America, but over there it’s not like an issue of clean or traditional energy. It’s that we need energy and we need more and we need it to be reliable. what I think, how I can compare and contrast is that in different Caribbean countries, they’re paying excessive amounts per kilowatt hour. They need, all the Caribbean, hurricanes are hitting. three times, four times a year. Look what just happened in Jamaica a few months ago. They need power, they need reliable, for clinics, for industrial, for machinery, like manufacturing, they need power. So it’s not like... something that can be deliberated on too much. Like we need it, what’s the easiest way and how can we integrate it with what we have at hand? Some have gas, some do coal, others have a lot of renewables. And what they’re thinking is more on like, how can we advance the microgrid integrations so that we can use all the different energy sources, we can make them communicate and how can we like Use a little bit of everything so that we have sustainable power when we need it And I think also in Latin America, maybe you know, they’re not really Hurricane targets that much just because of where they’re geographically located, but the grids are not as clean over there So there’s a lot of like brownouts and you know industries need consistent power because if you have for example a hospital, you know if they don’t have consistent power, maybe their vaccine bank might suffer, right? Or an industry, if they have the machinery operating and the grid goes down for even three seconds, that might stop a machine and to get it back online might take a week, might take a month. So that really hurts. industries so they’re really thinking of like okay how do we make sure we are as resilient as we can be so they’re on board you know they’re growing they’re doing policies that are advancing access to clean energy and also let’s not forget about rural communities you know it’s very important that while we’re thinking about gigawatts megawatts there’s a lot of small little towns that still need access to a fridge or maybe a freezer for the lady who makes little ice creams for the kids outside of the community school. So they’re thinking about that. They’re thinking about, they’re still way behind in access to energy. So they’re thinking about that as well. know, they’re not, all the cities are connected to the grid. There’s not a lot of infrastructure in the rural parts of many of these countries. So they’re still on the bandwagon. We need to get power out there to the most rural communities. So necessity has been driving a lot of innovation and growth.

Aaron Nichols: Have you met Robin Swanheiser yet from Twende Solar? she’s great. You should look her up. Twende is a nonprofit that builds solar energy systems all around the world in communities where electrification is the primary need. So they go to places that don’t have electricity and deploy solar. and she’s the executive director. She’s the only employee at the company. The rest is run by volunteers, and I really hope to go on one of their trips and install one of the systems one day.

Laura Gutierrez: I love that. Hey, you should invite me. I would love to. I was just in Honduras about maybe a month ago, two months ago, one of my dear, dear, dear clients, Paola Rodriguez and Richard Hansen, they are also working on deploying solar to the rural communities in Honduras. And sometimes they have to go last mile delivery three hours on a donkey. or on a little canoe to make sure they’re getting that equipment out there. And when they were walking me through the process, showing me the pictures, this is the first meeting I have dropped in tears. Like, my gosh. We’re sitting in our offices thinking about how can we do much more? How can we grow, grow, grow? And just to know that there’s people out there who are really, really doing that last mile, which such passion and such purpose, it just makes me feel like, wow, like we are doing what we need to do. And I think that purpose is just so important, so important. Like it really is my compass for moving forward and. all the creativity that I have or any of the goals that I have for the future. So a lot of that is happening in the Caribbean and Latin America. So they’re moving forward. They need more solar, just more energy in general. And I think that slowly we’re getting there with renewable energy. And I think that’s great.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah, so what we have to learn from Latin America is shut up, solar’s great, just deploy more of it, stop overthinking it.

Laura Gutierrez: Makes me happy. Yeah, I mean, and it doesn’t have to be one thing or the other. We need it all, you know? Let’s think about one minute for like AI and where we’re going with AI. We need more solar. We need more energy everywhere. Like I’m a sustainability student. I just finished my master’s. Like, yeah, I can talk to you all day about the issue of like, you know, oil and gas, but no, we need it all. We need it all. We need, know, communities have different needs. They have different benefits or things that are working for them. It’s not about this is bad, this is good. It’s about how do we make sure that we are building resilient communities and we all need to work together.

Aaron Nichols: Well, I could talk to you all day, but unfortunately we’re coming up on time. So I ask everyone who comes on the show the same closing question, and it has to do with, I spoke at my grandma’s 80th birthday party this summer. And when I was sitting there thinking about what 80 years means, it means that she was born in 1945. So she was born into a world where renewable energy did not exist. mean, PV was only invented in 1954. And so much has happened since then. Like we went from windmills that only pumped water to windmills that generate electricity. We went from PV being this like fringe thing for hippies who were growing stuff in California all the way to today where it’s the cheapest power source. And if you were just to take a wild guess, what do you think clean energy looks like 80 years from now?

Laura Gutierrez: the norm. I think it’s gonna be the norm. It’s not gonna be the only energy source out there, but it’s gonna be the norm. And the more people learn and realize that you, in the way that you can, be more in charge of self-production or community production. Maybe it’s not, you know, everyone has solar on their roof, but... at a regional level, micro communities, they’re all thinking, okay, how can we set ourselves up so that we are energy independent or that we are energy, you know, we have more resilience. So that’s where I think, you know, the norm is gonna be. People are gonna wanna have whatever way that they can to generate their own power, but I think it’s gonna be more towards like... microgrids, regional, like micro communities, everyone’s gonna be like their own little little city of power, of generating power. That’s what I would love to see and that’s what I think the future is gonna take us because what we’ve learned or what we did learn, you know, what your grandma probably learned was, yeah, the utility, we don’t mess with that solar, it’s the utilities job to make sure we get the power. I think moving towards the future, people know that it’s our responsibility. If we really do want to be resilient and have continuous power in the way that we can, we need to take charge of that. And I think that’s where the future will take us, hopefully.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on today. And if you do want people to find you online, where do you want them to find you?

Laura Gutierrez: Thank you so much for having me, Erin. I think LinkedIn is a great place to find me. You can find me, slash Laura Carolina Gutierrez. I can help you drop that in your notes for later, but I’m so happy to connect with anyone who is curious about my journey, who wants to think of how they can build a service business or what tools are out there. So that you know they can empower and create more revenue streams for their existing business I think that Solar installers have been very creative in the last two years But still you know moving towards next year the next two three years We need to get even more creative and how we can keep our businesses thriving and alive keep deploying clean energy out there. It’s time to put everyone’s head together and really find creative ways so that we can continue to build.

Aaron Nichols: Great way to end and for anyone listening that’s been This Week in Solar.

Laura Gutierrez: 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

What’s New:

On Tuesday, Chief Judge Denise Casper of the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts issued a preliminary injunction halting five Trump administration policies designed to stall solar and wind development.

Why it Matters:

The ruling protects over $905 million in already-invested capital and ensures developers will be able to access between $8-$25 billion in federal tax credits that were at risk due to delays.

Judge Casper noted that stalling these projects harms the public interest by weakening a power grid already struggling to meet record demand from AI data centers and new manufacturing.

The ruling effectively “unfreezes” projects that were trapped in administrative limbo.

The court found that the administration likely violated the Administrative Procedure Act by creating “arbitrary and capricious” barriers to renewable energy.

This ruling protects approximately 57.2 GW of clean energy capacity. That much power is capable of powering millions of homes. Those projects were at risk of cancellation or delay after 2029.

Key Policies Overturned

The injunction targets specific bottlenecks used by the Department of the Interior (DOI) and the Army Corps of Engineers. These included:

* Political Sign-off: The ruling struck down the requirement for Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to personally approve every solar and wind permit. This is a task historically handled by career experts who have industry knowledge about these technologies, not by the Secretary of the Interior.

* The Capacity Density Rule: The ruling also blocked an order that prioritized energy projects based on land-use efficiency. This specifically favors coal and natural gas over solar and wind farms, since fossil fuel technologies typically take less land. If you’re reading or listening and you think that the land use argument is a good one, take a moment to think about the ways we use land in our cities. Parks, golf courses, public land, and anything else we deem a public good are also not financially efficient uses of land. But we agree to use land for those things because we all agree that our lives are better with them around. Clean energy technology is no different.

* Offshore Barriers: The ruling also paused a legal opinion that effectively barred new offshore wind projects if they conflicted with any other ocean use, such as fishing.

What’s Next

While the preliminary injunction is a win for the industry, the legal battle continues as the case moves toward a full trial.

The Trump administration has not yet stated if it will appeal, but proponents of this injunction, like Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM), say they now expect a flood of permit approvals in the coming weeks.

The decision may also jumpstart stalled bipartisan “permitting reform” talks in the Senate. Lawmakers are now considering legislation to prevent any future administration from unilaterally canceling lawfully issued energy permits.

Sources:

Federal judge blocks Trump administration restrictions on wind and solar projects

Court curtails Trump administration moves to stifle wind, solar development

A judge blocked Trump’s clean energy blockade. Are projects out of limbo?

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 talks with Tim Montague, host and creator of the Clean Power Hour podcast and a WSI Certified AI Business Consultant.

Tim is a 30-year industry veteran. Today, he helps solar EPCs and developers use AI as an accelerant to automate repetitive workflows and scale twice as fast.

If you’re ready to cut through the hype and find practical uses for AI, this episode’s for you.

Listen here, or on:

* YouTube

* Apple Podcasts

* Spotify

Connect with Tim on LinkedIn here.

Expect to learn:

* Why you should use AI as an accelerant, not a replacement.

* How to master bot wrangling and lead a digital workforce.

* What you should and shouldn’t outsource to AI

Quotes from the episode:

“If you can build an AI agent that works 24/7 and doesn’t take vacation—that’s pretty amazing. That’s going to help you do things faster, cheaper. And in business, that really matters.” — Tim Montague

“Meaning is so subjective. We truly create meaning... Find your mission and then go find people who share that mission and find a tribe.” — Tim Montague

Transcript:

Aaron Nichols: Tim, you’ve recently made a pivot to AI in your solar consulting business. Now, obviously there’s a ton of hype around AI, as there is around any new technology, and some of that hype is complete nonsense. So in your opinion, where can solar companies deploy AI for real ROI and what’s fluff?

Tim Montague: In my opinion, it is all about using AI as an accelerant. And the place where I think it will most often be applied is in workflows. You know, these are processes—any workflow that has repetitive manual elements to it, where you’re entering data or sending a message, exchanging information. That takes time and can be sped up with AI. Not everything can be, not every process can be sped up with AI, okay, we have to be careful. But ultimately, yes, it is gonna be an accelerant for solar companies, for all companies. If you deal with knowledge work, you can benefit from AI. And soon, if you deal with physical work, you can benefit from AI and robotics. Solar panel installation robots are a thing.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I’ve certainly fully embraced Gemini Pro and it’s become like an incredible assistant for me, especially for research... Now I’m curious, where have you seen it fail? Where have you seen people implement it and then it was just AI for AI’s sake and it just didn’t really help?

Tim Montague: Well, let me caveat this by saying I’m very new as an AI consultant. I am a technology stack consultant... My fundamental value proposition, Aaron, is that I am an accelerant. I will help you as a company go where you need to go twice as fast as you would on your own. First of all, not getting in the game, I think is the biggest mistake, Aaron. You’ve got to get in the game because you will get left behind. If you can build an AI agent that works 24/7 and doesn’t take vacation—that’s pretty amazing.

And then it’s always a question of: do you build or buy? And it’s a “both and” probably. You need the foundation like the LLM, you need a professional subscription so your intellectual property is protected... You have to keep a human in the loop and then yeah, make mistakes. Hire people that are curious. Those employees who are more friendly to working with AI as an assistant are gonna go further. If you’re an employee or a leader, you get in the game and be a good “bot wrangler.”

Aaron Nichols: Well, I’m excited to one day add “bot wrangler” to my LinkedIn. Big fan of the term. For everyone listening, 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 my guest today is—is it Tim Montague or Montague?

Tim Montague: We say Montague. The Montagues that came to America in the 1600s were from England, although the name is French origin, montagne, which means mountain.

Aaron Nichols: Nice. Tim, would you please introduce yourself and just talk a bit about who you are in the industry and your background?

Tim Montague: Sure, I am a solar professional. I’m a consultant to the industry. I’ve made it my business to be an expert in commercial industrial (C&I) solar, behind-the-meter solar. I’ve also developed some community solar projects... and I’m also a podcaster like yourself, Aaron. My show is The Clean Power Hour. I learned that I’m not a great writer, but podcasting was a great outlet. This work is very important for energy professionals to learn more about how this works. It’s not smoke and mirrors; there’s really an economy here creating jobs and cleaning the air.

Aaron Nichols: If you were the head of a small to mid-sized solar installer, what would you do right now to make sure you thrived in 2026? What pivots would you be making?

Tim Montague: The biggest one is to fully embrace batteries. Any place there’s electricity is a place that a battery is useful because it’s a sponge—it absorbs electricity and generates it on demand. Batteries are great for resiliency, but they also are great for the grid operator and can help the facility owner reduce their energy bill. Lithium-ion is the big dog right now, but it’ll change.

If you’re an industrial facility owner, on a big building, you could save $250,000 a year with a solar array in Illinois. With a battery, you can 5X the savings over 15 years. In Illinois, we have battery-specific incentives—a cash incentive of $250 per KWH. That juices the economics. If you’re a legislator or a policy person, copy what’s being done in Illinois, New York, or Massachusetts.

Aaron Nichols: Yeah, I’m very bullish on local groups and local impact as we face an unfriendly federal administration.

Tim Montague: Yes, the state lever. Our Governor Pritzker here in Illinois has made it clear that he’s very pro-clean energy. We’re shutting down coal and natural gas and replacing those facilities with solar, wind, and batteries. Google just announced a deal with Energy Dome, which is super cool—compressed CO2 storage. The state levers are very important.

Aaron Nichols: I heard at a conference that 70% of the locked-in carbon reduction we’ve seen since the turn of the century has been a direct result of deploying clean energy locally due to state and local policy.

Tim Montague: The federal policy is impactful—the phase-out of the ITC (Investment Tax Credit) for residential solar is a thing, though there’s an extended ITC for commercial batteries. Residential solar is in decline nationally because of the ITC phase-out, but I went to Tennessee and met installers with a 90%+ attachment rate of batteries.

Aaron Nichols: Your mission is to speed up the energy transition. What do we need to do right now to make that future come true?

Tim Montague: We’re making the energy transition, but China is on track to green their grid by 2050 while the US is on track for 2148—100 years slower. We have a climate chaos problem. There’s an emerging science called “climate restoration” to get back to pre-industrial levels of 300 PPM of CO2. One biomimetic technology is ocean iron fertilization. Phytoplankton take sunshine and iron to suck carbon out of the atmosphere. For $1 or $2 billion a year, we could suck a lot of carbon out.

I’m more hopeful than ever that we can solve the climate crisis, but I am less confident in the AI crisis. When superintelligence emerges, it’s going to be thousands of times smarter than us. We have to be careful.

Aaron Nichols: What advice would you give to anyone like me who’s just starting out here?

Tim Montague: Establish a mission. Having a focus will help you find your passion. Find your tribe—I love working in this industry because there’s a lot of mission-driven people. And travel. My global travel experiences have been some of the best in my life. You get to see how other people live and realize that while America is a great place, there are other ways of living.

Aaron Nichols: My grandma turned 80 last year. Everything from the invention of PV to it becoming the cheapest power source has happened within her lifetime. What do you think energy looks like 80 years from now?

Tim Montague: We should build a “Dyson sphere” around the Earth—an HVDC network (high-voltage direct current) that connects the whole globe. We could take wind power from where it’s windy and sun power from where it’s sunny to any other part of the globe instantaneously. We would have a superabundance of energy.

I think UBI (universal basic income) will be a thing because AI will do a lot of jobs. And then there’s transhumanism—the ability to be connected to the internet via something like Neuralink. Ask me when I’m 80; if I’m falling apart physically and it could give me an extension of high-quality life, I might go for it.

Aaron Nichols: Where do you like to be found?

Tim Montague: LinkedIn is the best place. Come to a trade show—I’m going to RE+, NABCEP, ACP, and Intersolar. My aim this year is to meet 100 listeners in the flesh.

Aaron Nichols: Thank you for coming on, Tim. That’s been This Week in Solar.

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:

Freedom Forever, the second-largest residential solar installer in the U.S. as of 2025, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Wednesday.

The company reported a massive capital gap, with estimated liabilities between $500 million and $1 billion against assets of $100-$500 million.

Why it matters:

This bankruptcy filing follows a string of national solar contractors that have filed for bankruptcy, including:

* The original SunPower

* Sunnova

* Posigen

* Titan

Industry experts point to the expiration of the residential solar tax credit and a shift toward third-party ownership (TPO) models (leases and PPAs) as the reason so many larger solar companies have recently failed.

Go Deeper:

Freedom Forever faces claims from 50,000 to 100,000 different creditors. Just weeks ago, the Texas Attorney General targeted Freedom Forever in a crackdown on “fraudulent and deceptive” sales practices.

At its peak, Freedom Forever had more than 3,000 employees, but the company recently shuttered 10 state markets and laid off 20% of its staff before filing for bankruptcy.

If you’re a homeowner or commercial building owner who sees news about large solar companies like Freedom Forever going out of business and feels hesitant, we want to reassure you.

Solar is a great thing when done right. At Exact Solar, we’ve watched hundreds of people feel empowered when they escape the cycle of ever-rising utility bills. If you or your friends are considering solar, and you live in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, talk to us at Exact Solar, and we’ll build you a solar energy system the right way.

If you live outside those states, look up Amicus Solar Cooperative or WattBot. These tools are designed to help you find locally owned, reputable solar companies that have been in business for decades and treat their customers right.

Plug-In Solar May Soon Be Legal in Five States

Last week, Maine became the second state to legalize balcony (plug-in) solar after Utah legalized it last year.

Plug-in solar in Virginia still awaits the governor’s signature.

Last week and earlier this week, Colorado and Maryland became the fourth and fifth states to advance legislation to their governor’s desks.

This legislation allows residents to buy and install solar panel systems that plug directly into standard wall outlets, allowing renters and those who cannot afford traditional rooftop installations some relief from exponentially rising utility bills.

These systems require no utility interconnection applications or expensive permits.

If you want to see where your state stands on legalizing plug-in solar, go to Bright Saver’s State Tracker or to pluginsolarguide.com. Both are linked in the sources section below.

Sources:

Residential solar installer Freedom Forever files bankruptcy

Residential solar company Freedom Forever files chapter 11 bankruptcy

Major Residential Solar Installer Files for Chapter 11

Bright Saver State Tracker

pluginsolarguide.com

Maine passes balcony solar law, Virginia and Colorado to follow

[Colorado] Senate Approves Bill to Allow Plug-In Solar Panels

Maine’s plug-in solar law takes effect in July and some companies are already selling products in the state

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

In this episode of This Week in Solar, host Aaron Nichols sits down with Jesse Callahan to explore how she built a high-growth solar division within an established roofing company.

They discuss her secret to creating “boring” systems that scale businesses by holding the weight so the people don’t have to.

You can connect with Jesse on LinkedIn here.

Listen to this episode here, or on:

* YouTube

* Apple Podcasts

* Spotify

Expect to learn:

* How the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) can bridge the gap between a visionary leader’s big ideas and daily technical execution.

* Why putting design and engineering at the center of your workflow ensures every project passes inspection on the first go-around.

Quote from the episode:

“The further you go downstream, the more difficult it is to catch the chaos before it becomes chaotic... Operations is oftentimes invisible until something breaks.” — Jesse Callahan

Transcript:

Aaron Nichols: Jesse, you built a solar company inside an established roofing company. Is that right? Did I get that right? And if that is right, what did that take and how did you make that happen?

Jesse Callahan: I did. I started the position back in April of last year, and we really started the business within the roofing company in June or July. So we had about six months to get to output—basically starting to install these systems from sales to install. Initially, I was hired to build out the division, the team, and develop the product. Then we got someone else on board who focused on the sales and development component.

When it comes to selling solar, especially in the climate we were in just about to lose the ITC (Investment Tax Credit), the selling component was pretty straightforward and captured a lot of interest. Going that route with the solar and roof model does two things: it presents the customer with two types of investment where the solar sits under the lifetime of the roof. One pinch point I’ve noticed in the residential industry is the R&Rs—the remove and reinstalls of old systems for a reroof. This model solves that. It also takes advantage of the capital the customer already has; they’ve already recognized they need a roof and established financing.

Aaron Nichols: Mm-hmm.

Jesse Callahan: The branding and marketing wasn’t a barrier. I noticed the real challenge was the ops infrastructure—acting as the architect of the entire solar division. I see a disconnect often in this industry between what’s sold versus what’s installed. I was able to catch that during development to ensure we maintained client promises.

Because of the year-end rush, everyone with solar experience was already employed. I had to hire a crew with no previous solar experience and, in a very short window, get them ready for that push. We actually exceeded our benchmarks with a small crew.

Aaron Nichols: Nice.

Jesse Callahan: And we had more than just solar-only scopes. Here in Oregon, we’re moving into more complex territory with battery incentives and utility encouragement. We haven’t done whole-home backup yet, but we were able to exceed industry benchmarks even with complex scopes, like working on metal standing seams in the height of the Oregon winter on 50 to 72-panel installs. We ended Q4 with a lot of pride.

Aaron Nichols: That’s amazing. Congratulations. And for anyone listening, 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. Today we are interviewing Jesse Callahan from Ironhead Roofing. Jesse, would you just introduce yourself real quick and talk about your day-to-day job?

Jesse Callahan: Absolutely. I’ve been in solar for seven to eight years, but in construction since I was 17. I started as a drafter/designer. In an EPC (Engineering, Procurement, and Construction) model, design and engineering are the center of the workflow. I kept recognizing a disconnect between what was promised and what was technically possible. I found myself bridging that gap through SOPs and workflows, which eventually landed me in operations. Today, my day-to-day is a mix of execution, standardization, and building systems.

Aaron Nichols: Fantastic. You’ve worked in a lot of home service companies. What is one thing you often see these companies struggling with, and what is the best way to fix it?

Jesse Callahan: Specifically in solar, I believe the “Ops-led EPC” is the best model because there are so many variables. Design and engineering dictate the middle ground between the promise to the customer and the physical install. It has a massive influence on your KPIs. For example, every install we’ve done passed inspection on the first try.

The key is developing workflow standards and guardrails. Residential solar is complex because you are retrofitting into existing electrical systems. If you don’t catch technical issues early, the homeowner might suddenly have to dish out an additional $14k. You can’t expect the sales team to catch what an electrician would, so you need handoff standards and risk assessment early in the process.

Aaron Nichols: Right, and it often lives in one person’s head somewhere, right?

Jesse Callahan: Exactly, and that’s not sustainable. When I built systems in previous roles, the system stayed with me. If I left, it would break. Now, my priority is making sure the systems hold the weight, not the person.

Aaron Nichols: So, what do you have to keep an eye on as a company grows and things start to break?

Jesse Callahan: You need to develop a system that is “boring” and scalable. You need to train your team to make decisions without you. I’m a big fan of EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System). It emphasizes roles over titles. You have a “Visionary” at the top for big ideas, and an “Integrator” below them to implement those ideas. Without an integrator, you end up with three different departments developing three different ways of doing things.

Aaron Nichols: Right. And meetings can often be just what people schedule when they don’t know what else to do.

Jesse Callahan: Definitely. I’ve been in so many meetings where I walk away with more questions than answers.

Aaron Nichols: I was a freelancer before Exact Solar, and I noticed entrepreneurs can be very wordy. They aren’t always good at filtering their big ideas.

Jesse Callahan: There’s definitely a disconnect there. Being in ops, I’m in the details every day. It’s hard to rip out of that and speak at a high level. But you have to learn to make it concise—three sentences with numbers involved to get the point across to leadership.

Aaron Nichols: How did you structure your messaging to customers when you launched solar inside a roofing company?

Jesse Callahan: Honesty. Solar customers need honesty right now. We are selling a “generating facility” to a homeowner. We have to be transparent. If something is caught in design that changes the plan, we have to explain the “why” using tech specs they can visualize. I also view the “onboarding” or handoff as a quality control measure. If I stay involved and see how a system performs a year later, that’s quality control. It’s about forming a relationship.

Aaron Nichols: Well, Jesse, I could nerd out about these details all day, but we are coming up on time. I ask everyone the same closing question. My grandma is 80; she was born before PV was even invented. Within her lifetime, solar went from non-existent to the lowest-cost form of electricity. What do you think clean energy looks like 80 years from now?

Jesse Callahan: I think the solar market will finally be standardized and won’t be a “separate” construction project. I’d like to see batteries become more efficient and environmentally friendly. I hope the jurisdiction and bureaucracy clean up so it isn’t so politicized. Ideally, a solar system will be built into new construction and last the 50-year lifetime of the home.

Aaron Nichols: Nice. We might just paint it on and it’ll beam electricity to our homes.

Jesse Callahan: Maybe! If we could mimic photosynthesis—the most efficient way to convert sunlight—it wouldn’t even be a question of what resource to use. My ultimate goal for renewable energy is a “closed-loop” system that mimics the environment. Input, output, input, output.

Aaron Nichols: Thank you so much, Jesse. Where can people find you?

Jesse Callahan: LinkedIn under Jesse Callahan. We are Ironhead Solar in the Willamette Valley. I also want to shout out “Solar for Women.” Riley is an excellent leader there.

Aaron Nichols: I know Riley! She lives right down the road from me.

Jesse Callahan: No way! That’s crazy. Yeah, it’s a great resource to get more women involved in technical leadership.

Aaron Nichols: Well, thank you, Jesse. And for everyone listening, that’s been This Week in Solar.

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