Solar News Roundup March 2024
In March, clocks ticked forwards and the days continued getting longer, which means a lot more solar power for those of you with solar panels. We’re continuing our monthly recap of news in the solar industry to give you a quick digest of what you need to know as you’re searching for jobs or considering a career in the industry.
As we highlighted in our January 2024 and February 2024 monthly roundups, there is always both good news and bad news on solar (as with any topic). Our goal is to summarize and contextualize the headlines, trends, and announcements from the past month to give you a better picture of the industry for you to make the best decisions.
Media narrative of “Solar Collapse” gives way to more balanced perspective
In early 2024, we already highlighted the problems with sensationalist headlines that portrayed the solar industry on the brink of an apocalypse. This past month, media headlines struck a much more balanced tone that focused on the short-term challenges given the market today with the clear upside that will come from solar.
CNET correctly highlighted that while these challenges are real, the solar industry will rebound. Much of the downtick has been due to higher interest rates slowing investment decisions (the impact is felt across the economy), material costs given supply chain changes, and California’s NEM 3.0 consumer demand decline. But, the ROI for consumers is still there with the cost-savings from solar - it may just mean you’ll make your money back in 7-10 years instead of 3-5 years.
Popular Mechanics emphasized that “solar power explosion is unmatched in history” as it outpaced fossil fuels in 2023. While the author still highlighted the known challenges in solar, we applaud the headline for correctly contextualizing the progress and state of solar!
SEIA and Wood Mackenzie Solar Market Report
SEIA and Wood Mackenzie published their in-depth Solar Market Report last month, which includes a 10-year rolling forecast for the solar industry.
Their base case forecasts continued growth through 2023. Note the small dip in Residential from 2023 to 2024 as we expect this year to have less demand for many of the reasons noted above. They also put out a bear case and a bull case for the solar industry. The bear case more or less expects solar installations (as measured by GW) to remain steady for the next 10 years. Over the course of the past two decades, solar installations have typically outpaced forecasts, so the bear case here is unlikely.
The breakdown by cost of solar systems is very important to understand if you’re getting into the solar industry. It’s worth spending a few minutes studying their chart (included below) to understand what the costs breakdown. Overall, costs have continued decreasing, but last quarter was driven by an oversupply of solar modules, which dropped price across residential and commercial installations (the maroon bar on the bottom of each column).
New Innovation - Flexible Solar is coming
CSIRO, an Australian government agency focused on scientific and industrial research, published a report for their “flexible” solar panels that are lightweight and highly portable. While the efficiency still lags vs. traditional silicon panels (11% vs. ~20% for most panels installed today).
This breakthrough not only underscores the continued innovation in solar R&D, but opens up many opportunities to deploy solar energy where it was previously unthinkable. The panels are much more feasible to deploy in remote environments - think defense, emergency management, or agriculture. Instead of lugging heavy panels out to a field, you may be able to “unroll” a panel. Deployment in existing areas may become much easier. PV installations can be tricky given the weight of materials, but rolling a flexible sheet makes installation on parking garages, steep rooftops much, much easier.
More Government Incentives and Funding
First up, a fun one. The DOE (US Department of Energy) kicked off a Solar Photo Competition with some serious prize money. You can earn up to $2,500 and there’s $1,000 for each category winner. Start dusting off those cameras (or cleaning your iPhone lens) and get your photos in before May 23 at 5pm ET!
The DOE invested $44M in a number of universities and utility operators to help improve interconnection queues that can occur during extreme weather. As the energy grid becomes more complex, interconnection jobs will become even more important.
Six states received a total of $22M in funding to improve siting and permitting for large-scale solar and storage projects. Solar Project Developers run into endless hurdles when scoping new projects and this funding should help simplify some of those challenges.
Solar Training Funding
The DOE also launched a $5M prize to incentivize private companies and educational institutions to create more training programs for solar manufacturing. This will undoubtedly spur more opportunities to bridge into solar manufacturing if you don’t check all the technical boxes today.
April’s Solar Eclipse will not cause electricity shortages
The much awaited Solar Eclipse on April 8th will cause 39.9 GWh hours of solar power to be lost in the US (estimate from Solcast), but this is well within the national energy grid’s buffer. Texas may lose up to 16% of its solar energy, but there are no concerns per the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. So, get out there with your eclipse sunglass and don’t worry about whether or not you’ll have electricity to run your dishwasher when you get home!
Even West Virginia is going solar
West Virginia, which is the country’s 2nd largest coal-producing state after Wyoming, is starting its solar transition. FirstEnergy solar now has a solar field with 50,000 panels that produces almost 20 MW per hour
Solar job and sales scams still exist - do your research!
We’ve previously highlighted how solar has unfortunately been marked by some sales scandals where consumers are misinformed about the costs, warranties, and government incentives for solar. Florida’s Attorney General last month issued guidance to consumers for how to detect a scam and resources to contact if they are not sure whether their information is to be trusted.
Given a few rotten apples certainly exist in solar, it’s important to do your diligence when joining a company and applying to jobs. Be wary of sales or installation roles that promise very high salaries - we highly recommend chatting with a recent customer about their experience before joining a company.