This year, the OneRoof Energy team headed out to Chicago for the annual Solar Power International (SPI) conference. For those at home, SPI is the largest solar industry gathering in North America, featuring keynote speeches, panel discussions and exhibitions from solar energy professionals across the globe. While attendance numbers were lower than usual this year, likely due to its location in the often cloudy and definitely Windy City, more than 15,000 solar geeks gathered together to discuss the industry’s latest and greatest services and technology.
Over the course of four days, the conference aimed to provide peer-led educational programming designed to exchange ideas and help drive solar business solutions. Discussions focused on many industry-vexing solar topics, including solar financing, commercial and utility-scale inverters, module manufacturing, solar monitoring and the overall commercialization of new solar technologies. During these “in the weeds” conversations, we had the opportunity to hear from our peers: leading industry professionals who had many exciting insights to share, particularly on the future of the solar.
Often when discussing the future of the solar industry, we automatically start spouting statistics on the climbing installation numbers, predicted market growth or introduction of new products – such as OneRoof Energy’s recent addition of secured and unsecured debt financing to its financial offerings. While these are key indicators of solar energy’s evolution, Solar Power International reminded us that the conversation has shifted dramatically over the past few years.
The future of the solar industry is no longer about introducing new product after new product in an effort to be different from competitors or to get there first. Instead, the industry has moved toward refining our current technologies to increase efficiency, provide more value and – ultimately – drive down costs for our customers. For residential solar in particular, the end game is to make solar as affordable as possible for homeowners, which means addressing what we call “soft costs” and inefficiencies in installation, permitting and financing a rooftop solar project.
In technology, we like to measure change in big, watershed moments. Until recently, solar energy didn’t enjoy the same kind of explosive growth as other technologies. In fact, solar technology has been around for decades and, as we’ve seen, things have moved from a slow and steady march to rapid residential solar installation adoption across the country. We may always be racing toward the next big thing, but right now the next big thing is - how we get the best deal for homeowners?
It took nearly five years for the solar industry to find what works best for our customers; I can only imagine what an Solar Power International gathering will look like in another five years. I look forward to catching a glimpse of the full solar spectrum in 2018.
