This Week in Solar

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 * SpotifyExpect 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 PatelTranscript: 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 WhitepaperAmerica’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 themBright Saver State TrackerClearing the way for plug-in solarWhy 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* SpotifyConnect 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 ShulockTranscriptAaron 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* Apple Podcasts* SpotifyWhat’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 oftwo 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 theMidwest,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 theUnited 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 creditsRepublican legislators seek to restore clean energy tax creditsRepublican 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* Apple Podcasts* SpotifyConnect 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 GutierrezTranscriptAaron 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 everyAaron 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: youLaura 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 todayAaron 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