Solar News Roundup February 2024
As we highlighted last month in our January News roundup, it can be challenging to disentangle what’s actually going on in the solar industry from all of the media headlines covering the good, the bad, and the ugly of the solar industry. Oftentimes, headlines like to focus on the ugly. But, there’s a huge difference between a dying industry and one that is not growing at the incredibly optimistic forecasts that people had 2 years ago. In February, we still saw exaggerated and misrepresentative headlines like “Solar Power Isn’t Over Yet:
The industry is having a somewhat visible freakout. But broadly, it’s doing OK.” OK is certainly an understatement for the state of solar today…
Here at Work In Solar, we strive to give you an honest overview of what’s happening and summarize the trends and their implications for what this means for you. Of course, there are challenges in the industry as we highlighted last month, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a single person in the energy industry that doesn’t believe solar is going to skyrocket in the coming decades to be a major energy source for the United States. Unfortunately, you still see plenty of headlines that make it seem like the sun will stop shining and solar will never work.
The reality is that solar is the cheapest form of electricity today. There are interconnection, manufacturing, implementation, and maintenance challenges, but we have clear line-of-sight to figuring these issues out. And plenty of smart and hardworking people are tackling these challenges head-on.
Let’s dive into some of the major news from last month:
The Super Bowl Powered by Solar
The Super Bowl was powered entirely by solar energy! The power came from an agreement the stadium had with NV Energy, which operates a solar farm in Nevada with over 600,000 solar panels. And yes, the panels even powered Usher’s halftime show, Mahomes’ runs, Kelce’s game-winning speech, and Taylor Swift’s instagram… On a serious note, this goes to show the progress large utility-scale solar fields and storage have made. The Super Bowl needed enough energy to power 46,000 homes at once, and most of the game was played without direct solar power, thus needed storage.
Government Incentives Creating More Solar Opportunities
Government incentives beyond the IRA are continuing to create more opportunities. Last month, The DOE announced various initiatives to help hit the target of growing community solar to 20 GW by 2025. The National Community Solar Partnership will be spearheading this effort. As an example of an initiative, they released a new best-in-class model for how community solar can be integrated into the energy grid. The model is intended to minimize the interconnection costs, which can take a long time to review before any community deployments. Plus, it’s got a fun acronym - LODGE (Least-cost Optimal Distribution Grid Expansion) Model.
Solar + Storage = 81% of the Market in 2024
The EIA announced last month its forecast for additional utility-scale electricity capacity. Solar, combined with energy storage, will account for 81% of total US-capacity in 2024. The number received some criticism as it’s not apples-to-apples to include battery storage with electricity generation. However, most of the battery storage is powered up by solar and can be used concurrently (assuming it is charged) or at night when solar is not available. For solar to truly scale, we’ll need a dramatic increase in storage.
What this means for you - as a professional in the solar industry, you’ll need to develop a keen understanding of how storage systems work. Storage will be integrated into most residential, commercial/industrial, and utility-scale systems. Storage tech is evolving quickly as batteries become more efficient and cheaper, so you’ll want to keep upskilling yourself and staying on top of the latest trends
While the major public solar companies have faced public headwinds in recent months with rising interest rates and the impact from NEM 3.0, Sunrun announced last month that it is doing very well with its solar + storage offerings, noting last month that 85% of new customers are purchasing storage with solar.
Workforce Pay and Training Improves
Solar Builder Mag interviewed various industry experts to get their take on workforce challenges. While experts acknowledged the challenges in hiring, they see momentum with the IRA’s apprenticeship program scaling up, more efforts between technical colleges and private/public enterprises, and more willingness from solar contractors to take on training to scale up their workforce.
The IRA wage requirements were largely not cited as a concern by these employers. This means companies have already priced in paying solar workers into their plans. We’ll likely see solar salaries continue to increase as workers are upskilled. Check out our latest Solar Salaries Report from last month to see what jobs are currently paying.
Texas Solar Keeps Accelerating
Texas continues its accelerated adoption of solar, outpacing California’s adoption at a similar stage. Lightsource bp announced two massive utility projects in the state totalling 288 MW of capacity in Starr County and Brazoria County. Keep a lookout for jobs in the upcoming months. And yes, the “bp” is from British Petroleum company, which is looking to get in on the rapid growth of solar and diversify into more efficient and sustainable energy sources.
Texas is now 3rd in the country for solar power generation with 2.6Gwh of power generation, just behind in Arizona. California is still far in the lead with 15.9Gwh of energy, but Texas is expected to surpass California in terms of added capacity. Texas Solar has grown 3,700% over the past 10 years and it is outpacing California, which started adopting solar much earlier.
State-level Solar Policy is having a mixed impact across the country
States like Massachusetts have seen a big decline in solar installations from their previous highs. The current installation pace in Massachusetts is half of what it was in 2021. However, the state is making various policy changes to help incentivize additional deployments. Much like California’s NEM 3.0 changes, it is widely viewed that certain policies around the SMART (Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target) metering, which pays lower and lower rates as capacity increases, is aggressively stunting additional installation. As a result, Massachusetts is likely falling behind its longer-term renewables targets.
In California, various new bills were introduced to help mitigate the slow-down in residential solar including one that would require CPUC (California Public Utilities Commission) to revise the solar credit system. It’s become apparent to most policy and industry professionals that the changes were excessively harsh and are preventing California from reaching its renewables targets. The state needs to triple its solar capacity in the coming decade, but it is quickly falling behind a realistic pace to get there given last year’s policy changes.
What this means for you - policy continues to shift quickly, so it’s important to stay up-to-date. Overall, there is a growing consensus that last year’s NEM 3.0 had very negative reverberations across the industry, so we’ll likely expect to see some reversal in the coming years. However, it is important to note that NEM 3.0 is having some of its desired impact as we noted above in pushing California installations to be paired with storage.
Solar Decommissioning will present new opportunities in the future
We’ve highlighted that maintenance jobs are growing incredibly quickly as solar capacity has exploded in recent years. Fast-forwarding further down the road, PV Tech recently highlighted that decommissioning solar panels, which generally happens 20-40 years after installation, is going to take a lot of work. That means jobs and opportunities. Early solar adopters are just beginning to hit this threshold, but we’ll likely see entirely new job and business opportunities to support decommissioning and upgrading solar systems beyond much of today’s maintenance jobs.
Company Highlight of the Month: Nextracker
Nextracker produces software and controls to help with solar tracking and controlling solar panels to maximize their efficiency by following the sun’s path. This is a great example of how the Solar Industry is now big enough where there are major companies building for operational improvements of solar fields. Innovation continues to drive the efficiency of solar forwards. Nextracker is hiring for hundreds of jobs today.
Solar Narratives Shifting - it’s getting tougher and tougher to be a critic
Nature combining with solar to co-exist
Large-scale utility solar deployments have received criticism from environmentalists for their impact on local ecosystems. However, a recent project in Wyoming is showing promise for a win-win-win situation. The Dutchman solar project, by BrightNight, will allow sheep and cattle to continue grazing on land where solar panels are located by elevating the panels to not affect the soil or the animals’ grazing. Not only is this a win for the local farmland and energy production, it is also a big win for farmers, who can add another source of revenue to their farms.
Be wary of extreme op-eds that are shared on social
David Blackmon, who unsurprisingly spent his entire career working in oil & gas and was the Texas State Lead for America’s Natural Gas Alliance, authored an Op-ed in The Telegraph claiming there is a “revolt against green energy” because solar and wind farms are “ugly.” He provides no evidence of this “revolt” besides a sensationalist image of a wind turbine on fire as the article’s cover photo.
As with some extremist narratives, there is a small degree of truth to his perspective. There are trade-offs when developing large-scale solar projects - they can impact local communities and ecosystems, not everyone may think solar panels look pretty friggin’ cool, and there probably will be some businesses that may struggle to make the transition. However, Blackmon massively overblows these concerns in order to clearly further his own oil & gas agenda. Also, David - do you honestly believe fracking sites are much more visually pleasing than solar and wind fields? [we could insert an image here of a fracking well emitting hazardous smoke and bursting into flames… but, we won’t stoop to his level]
We’re excited to see what changes in March as solar energy generation starts ramping back up after the darkest winter months. Subscribe to our blog to stay up-to-date on the changes in the industry and be sure to explore our job board for the latest and greatest job opportunities in solar.