ConveYour's Solar News Roundup - Q2 2024

Every quarter, our ConveYour team assembles a newsletter digest of the biggest news, trends, and developments in the world of residential solar. This newsletter is sent out to our subscribers before it gets posted on the site. ‍

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- A new solar verification platform called Recheck launched this quarter as the result of a partnership between the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), Sunrun and other solar financiers.

- World4Solar's pre-assembled residential solar canopy, HelioWing, had its official launch this quarter in sunny Miami, FL.

- Europe's premier solar business convention, Intersolar Europe, was held from June 19 to June 21. The North American edition will be held this February. Registration is available here.

- SolarEdge announced their next-gen residential + storage portfolio at this year's Intersolar conference. Promising more storage and higher efficiency, the unit will hit the market in the second half of 2025.

- Comparably released their list of Best Leadership Teams of 2024. Solar teams featured included Sunrun, Sunnova, and Everlight Solar.

Did You Know?

Solar power is the ONLY energy source that produces ZERO noise pollution!

When we first started this newsletter in Q1 of 2022, the future for residential solar could not have been brighter. Installations were up, investment in renewables was a sure thing with new federal legislation, and residential solar companies could to reap the benefits of the trend with solar capacity exploding worldwide.

What a difference two years can make. What started as a paranoid whisper has now turned into reality: in 2024, the residential solar industry is facing real, existential challenges.

Of course, solar, especially residential solar, isn't going anywhere. But we will start to see some changes in the industry.

Don't just take our word for it, though. Industry analyst Wood Mackenzie released their market predictions for 2024. Their report included an analysis of how things got to this point and where they are likely to go in the future.

The key takeaway of the Wood Mackenzie report is this: 2024 will see a solar industry contraction, with an estimated 14% reduction in solar installations predicted this year. This is driven by weakening consumer demand nationwide as well as California's new NEM 3.0 legislation, which has cut CA-based solar installations by nearly 40% statewide.

It isn't all doom and gloom. This news comes as America has officially passed 5 MILLION solar installations nationwide as of May 2024.

"The U.S. solar industry continues to show strength in terms of deployments. At the same time, the solar industry faces a number of challenges to its continued growth including availability of labor, high voltage equipment constraints, and continued trade policy uncertainty."

Michelle Davis, Head of Global Solar, Wood Mackenzie

Did You Know?

In one hour, Earth receives more solar energy than its population can consume in an entire year!

For nearly 10 years now, the name of the game for solar customers was loan-financed solar ownership. This historically has been bolstered by low finance rates meaning that homeowners could take out a cheap loan and own their solar panels outright. Nearly 70% of the residential solar market was loan-financed in 2022.

However, with the sharp increase in interest rates starting in 2022, loan-backed solar began to lose its grip. Before that, third party solar ownership (TPO), which involves homeowners entering into an agreement with a third-party solar owner (usually the solar company themselves), was the king. Now, TPO installations are rising for the first time since 2015 as homeowners seek options that will get them access to solar power for less money.

In 2023, TPO project volumes increased by a staggering 32% and advanced to 23% market share. Barring some drastic cuts to interest rates in the future, expect this segment of residential solar to take off yet again in the coming couple of years, with Wood Mackenzie predicting a 41% market share by 2026.

We are also likely to see the consolidation of solar financing that happened a few years ago to continue to reverse. In 2022, 80% of the solar loan market consisted of just three lenders. In 2023, that market share fell to 53%. Wood Mackenzie's "unknown" category for solar financing companies (a catch-all for smaller, newer, or miscellaneous businesses) grew to a whopping 43% in 2023 as well. Some states have made legislative changes to support TPO, like Virginia, who passed new, supportive legislation around TPO this April.

All of this collectively points to new players entering the solar market. Over the past few years, solar businesses exploded, and not every single one could be sustained. What we are seeing now is a maturation of the residential solar market, where bad actors and unsustainable models are weeded out by market conditions as new blood enters the race.

Today’s Solar Industry Spotlight feature goes out to Washington, DC-based solar company, Prism Solar Power! While Prism the company may be new, the people who make it up have been working in solar for a long time. Their leadership team brings 80 years of combined experience to the table! Prism mainly operates in the world of community solar using third-party solar ownership (TPO) to bring solar to customers for zero out-of-pocket cost. 

Prism has been hard at work toward its goal of lowering the cost of electricity as the nation advances toward its renewable energy goals. Just this year, Prism completed a large-scale community solar project for Saint Anselm's Abbey School in DC, providing 1MW of solar to the school as well as the local community. On top of all of that, Prism Solar Power management has demonstrated their commitment to providing an exquisite onboarding and training experience for team through Prism's partnership with us at ConveYour!

“Based in Washington DC, Prism Solar specialize in originating, financing and developing solar projects . . . Our mission is to help the nation reach its renewable energy goals and to lower the cost of electricity."

Excerpt from Prism Solar Power's Mission Statement

Recruit, onboard, train, and retain more solar reps with less manual work so you can scale faster and dominate in the solar industry.

Click here for a FREE hands-on demo.