By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent
Could the Utah solar market be cratering just one year before Solar Power International heads to Salt Lake City.
No. The answer is no.
Despite breathless reporting over the weekend that implied that Utah’s market has hit the skids, most observers believe the market is simply correcting itself after full retail-rate net metering went away in November. And while installations are off 23% so far in 2018, it’s far too early to tell whether the decline will continue as consumers adjust to the new rules.
As Jasen Lee reported in The Deseret News, Utah’s oldest newspaper, the slide has been attributed by the Public Service Commission’s Administrator to an unusually high spike in installations ahead of the November deadline. Lee also says “observers” have said the 23% drop in installations is the result of fewer Utahns wanting solar on their roofs – but offers no examples of such “observers” in his story.
Instead, he cites Public Service Commission Administrator Gary Widenburg saying just the opposite:
“Some people rushed to get their installations done,” he said. “Now, several months later, things have settled down a little bit. Once that November date, passed, people who were going to have systems installed early did so and others are just planning accordingly.”
He said the decline seemed to be more because of the deadline rather than decreasing overall demand for rooftop solar.
“I think there was an increase in applications and (installation) activity,” he added. “People who were thinking about doing it and were in a position to do so took advantage of that ‘grandfather date’ and jumped in.”
In recent years, Utah has been a solar market on the climb – not near California and Arizona yet, but making its name known as a potential solar boom state. Therefore, to panic in the year following a significant change in net metering laws and declaring the state a solar bust state seems overheated and a bit hysterical. This has happened in solar states before – heck, it’s happened in the COUNTRY before. Once people adjust to the new rules, we would expect Utah to renew its rise as a solar state – just in time for Solar Power International to celebrate it next fall.
More:
After surge before new rules, solar installations in Utah slip 23%