The solar industry has been through a lot over the past 25 years: major advancements, setbacks and plenty of ups and downs. But what needs to change next isn’t the tech. The next chapter of solar depends on how we conduct ourselves, run our businesses and work with our communities.

The way I see it, if we improve our businesses, we can improve our relationships with our customers and work together to help the public better understand what solar can do.

After 25 years in the solar industry, I’m still optimistic about where it’s headed. When times get rough, it helps to remember where you started.

When I first began, I was young, my team was young and residential solar, at least in our area of Pennsylvania, was pretty young too. Money was tight. At more than one point, the thought entered my mind of just going to work somewhere else, but I knew that what we were doing was important, and I figured someone had to care about the potential for solar power in my community; it might as well be me.

Of course, the technology is quite different today. The improvements we’ve seen mean that installers can add systems much quicker, there’s much less clutter in a mechanical room or power conversion area, the arrays are nicer, everything is a lot neater, people get more value out of the systems as a whole and we see solar being used for more people, not just benefiting those early adopters.

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