“Now that the subsidies are gone, are you going to fold your tent, or create a business that is a survivor?” – (Doug Houseman, below)
Electricity expert and solar advocate Doug Houseman (we debate on LinkedIn) recently posted on the new reality for the subsidy-entitled solar industry. He is reacting to the Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill rollback (but not elimination!) of the Inflation Reduction Act, Investment Tax Credit, and Production Tax Credit.
“Today the world changed,” he began. “With the passage of the Mega bill energy assurance went away.”
It was that solar and wind developers and installers had a pretty good idea of what subsidies they would get, the subsidies were untouchable, and stable for decades. A little change here and there, but largely they stayed the same. Even though it made little sense to provide subsidies to rooftop solar, it was very stable too. Now they are not.
Houseman continued:
Tomorrow is a good day to reflect on your business and what you are going to do/change to make it grow without subsidies. How you are going to improve what you do, so you can lower your cost to the customer. Rooftop solar has been going up in cost, not down for the last decade, higher material costs, more expensive labor, insurance costs rising and so forth.
Is it robots, drones, cranes, or what to reduce the risk of getting it on the roof? What do you do to lower your business risk, and with it insurance costs. How do you take the bite out of marketing and quoting? How do you increase your win rate? How do you reduce your cost of capital and your maintenance burden, while increasing customer satisfaction?
Now that the subsidies are gone, are you going to fold your tent, or create a business that is a survivor?
Kudos to Doug Houseman. It is a new era, and it is time for the solar industry to get down to free market size. That starts off the grid, not on it, if the past is any guide.