If someone told me they were starting a solar company a decade ago, i would be very skeptical. The industry used to be flooded with sketchy salesmen from national brands backed by massive banks who were just looking to get people into high interest, high penalty loans. The business model was purely "get them to sign on the dotted line." This has left a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of potential customers. All this hassle and used car salesmen tactics to sell a product that was not ready for the market yet. The truth is, solar was not financially feasible for really anyone at that point in time. System costs were astronomical even with the government rebates. The cost per watt was in excess of $10 at times. This was purely for the ultra rich, doomsday preppers, sustainability advocates, or "suckers" as the salesmen would say. However, as panel tech improved by leaps and bounds and the push for sustainable energy has grown stronger, solar prices have started to fall; more like plummet. It's true that you can buy panels alone today for under 1$ per watt, but entire systems for homeowners are still hovering in the $3-$5 range, which is great for everyone. Prices have dropped 21% since 2016 alone. In this range it becomes a significant financial benefit when switching over to a solar PV system. This is also easily scalable, homeowners with a 1,000 sqft townhome can benefit from this and corporations with a 100,000 sqft warehouse can benefit just the same.
The solar industry in general has experienced a large jumpstart of external funding to improve panel efficiency. In 2021 we are looking at a market average of 20% efficiency per panel with some breaching the 24% barrier. These are the panels on the market. 5 years ago these panels were just myths, or flagships for entire start ups who claimed they had all the tech figured out. It seems like the solar panel industry is a lot like the car industry with concept cars. They come out with a new beautiful and powerful concept car and then when it comes out of production it is barely better than the last model. There are panels in testing which have breached 45% efficiency, but they are not on the market yet for residential or commercial use. It is incredibly exciting to see these technological advances and we can expect to see the market adapt these new panels in the next five years. Regardless of what headlines come out and the pressures of Covid, the solar industry has so much support behind it, and this is just the early adoption phase. Like electric vehicles or cryptocurrency, we have yet to find out the true potential of this technology.
Steele Wasik
Clean Choice Solar | Owner
M.S. Advertising in Green Energy Adoption
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