This is your SolarWakeup for April 20th, 2020

State Of The Solar Market. This Wednesday at 10am EST, I’ll be going over the current state of the market. The discussion will highlight the results from this week’s survey which you can participate in by clicking here, it takes a few minutes and is completely confidential. Register for the discussion here. And here is the survey link, please feel free to forward it to partners and colleagues.
Jobs Are Going To Be Lost. It’s hard to gloss over this in a headline or a brief paragraph because there is a real impact on the livelihoods of many in our industry. The pandemic crisis hit the industry like a brick wall at a terrible moment and is beating us up on both ends of the spectrum. Every company in the market was planning on growth this year, investing in it and in some instances stretching themselves to take advantage. Now the industry has to deal with the inability to meet the customers in person and building departments unable to provide permits and inspect projects. Summary, the industry has lower revenues and can’t collect on the backlog. What’s coming next is a potential cash crunch and consumers that can’t take advantage of the tax credit because 2020 liabilities are going to be down significantly.

Empty Offices. On Friday I joined Tigercomm in a panel discussion with other clean tech journalists and editors. In that discussion I posed the question I want to ask you. Isn’t it hard to imagine that the commercial office use will be the same a year from now than it was 3 months ago? What’s going to happen with the energy consumption in buildings and how is that consumption going to change the load in the residential sector with people staying home?

Hearing From Public Companies. Over the next month or so, we will hear from many public companies when they hold their earnings call. This is an ideal time to hear how they are impacted by the pandemic and how they plan on working with their customers to get through this. This is a topic I am interested in hearing more about, many of these companies will be able to make it through the moment but if their customers or customer’s customers can’t then they will have a market problem.

The Installer Base. One of the reasons I started the survey was to make sure I understand what installers are going through. This gives me data and perspective when I speak to suppliers and investors in the space about what you need to get help with especially through this moment. Installers have felt the margin squeeze even as the market was growing leaps and bounds. Competition is tough and you’re all in this fight in a way that feels lonely. You don’t have the information and leverage you need to make your point heard and I hope to play a role to help you do just that. The survey is step one. For 8 years I’ve published this newsletter and today more than ever I understand how I can help the market most, by helping the installers. If there is particular idea you need help with hit reply to this email or go to the survey. 

Opinion

Best, Yann