Solar News Roundup January 2024
We’re kicking off a monthly roundup of news in the solar industry and calling out major events, announcements, or trends for you to be aware of as you are searching for next career opportunities or just looking to stay in the loop to keep progressing in your job today.Â
January was a mixed month for solar. We’ve debunked an overly negative story from Time magazine stating rooftop solar is on the verge of collapse, a preposterous claim given the trends in the industry and how far we still have to go as a country in our solar transformation. However, that doesn’t mean it’s all blue skies for solar. We’ll highlight the good, the bad, and the uncertain below and discuss implicationsÂ
Solar demand is down in California and with that, so are Job Opportunities
Cal Matters recently found that rooftop demand has dropped 80% in California.   When NEM 3.0 was announced, thousands of customers rushed to purchase and implement solar before the new metering policies would go into effect. As you can in the chart below from Cal Matters, this resulted in a huge spike in demand at the beginning of 2023, which had the effect of pulling forward deals for any customers that were already considering switching to solar. Solar firms were also aggressively marketing that NEM 3.0 was coming, and that homeowners should rush to get solar before May 2023. However, we are still far below 2022 and even 2021 levels of solar applications. We are seeing some rebound, but it will likely take a reversal of NEM 3.0 to spur demand to prior levels. Â
Unsurprisingly, with many fewer installations, solar employers have had to cut jobs or change their business strategy. Some employers have shifted to focus on commercial installations, while others have gone back to being pure roofing companies. Estimates are now that California had to cut 17,000 solar installer jobs, about 22% of its workforce. However, there are still hundreds of solar jobs available in California as you can see on our Job Board. We expect this to rebound in the coming months. Â
Second Order Effects of the NEM 3.0 Slowdown
Some residential solar firms have exited the market entirely, such as ADT Solar, which was one of the highest-rate installers. ADT only recently entered the Solar market when it bought Sunpro Solar, so solar was not their core strategy. Â
Additionally, companies that serve solar firms or make products used by the solar workforce are also seeing the negative impact from NEM 3.0. Aurora Solar, which builds widely used software for solar sales, design, and project management, had to recently cut 20% of its workforce. Aurora prices their product per user, so with fewer total potential users, it’s not surprising that they had to make changes to continue supporting their existing customers. Â
But, NEM 3.0 encountering more resistance momentum
The Solar Industry widely opposed NEM 3.0, which was thought to benefit the major utilities in the state of California. While opposition has been consistent since the proposal was announced, January saw increased momentum. EWG (Environmental Working Group) and other groups joined together to file an appeal with California’s Supreme Court, stating that the California Public Utilities Commision failed to assess the widespread benefits of residential solar for consumers and the importance of solar in our renewables transition. Other associations like Common Dreams are joining in to provide support for the appeal, calling out that California’s 3 utilities are effectively monopolies that are blocking solar. Â
Major Solar project announcements set to create more solar jobs
The federal government, through the Bureau of Land Management, announced that it will open 22 million acres of federal land for solar development. The Solar Industry responded, applying more pressure, as this is still only a fraction of the 80 million acres of federal land that is used for oil and gas development. However, the 22 million acres will already lead to massive, utility-grade projects over the next decade. Â
Texas announced a solar farm that will provide 100 megawatts of renewable energy to 20,000 homes. For context, Texas has about 18,000 megawatts of capacity today, so this project alone will account for about 0.5% of total solar capacity. We expect to see more of these projects announced throughout this year with integrated storage and interconnection to the rest of the local grids.
In Florida, Duke Energy announced its first floating solar project. While its relatively small at 1MW, it is intended as a smaller scale test to determine if it will be both affordable, reliable, and scalable. While projects like these may not always succeed, they are invaluable in progressing forwards the industry. Â
Finally, the biggest solar and storage project in the United States came online during the month of January. The installation in California has over 2 million solar panel producing 857 megawatts of capacity with the ability to store 3,300 megawatt-hours of energy. This project was started in early 2021, and completed in less than 3 years with more than 1,000 unionized workers building the project. Now that the project is online, expect to see Technician and Electrician job postings to ensure the farm remains per performant
We still need a lot more solar despite progress
California’s Solar and Storage Association recently estimated that we still need 3.5x more solar energy in the state than it has today. With this, California will need about 7x the energy storage capacity in order to sustain the grid at night and cloudy days. The good news is that storage initiatives are making a lot of progress. SunRun announced that their solar + storage program was very successful at the end of 2023.
Looking ahead, even California, which leads the country in solar adoption, still requires a lot more growth to achieve its targets in the next decade. Job and career growth opportunities will be sure to exist across the industry for many, many years to come