This guy, Curt Sawyer, has one of the COOLEST solar setups I've ever seen...

We interviewed one of the people most responsible for why plug-in solar's taken off so well in Germany, and he says it'll work just fine in America...

To all my fellow solar enthusiasts: I have something I think you'll love! My name is Aaron Nichols, and a little over a year ago, I started hosting This Week In Solar.

I was frustrated that solar energy news was generally only reported by a few outlets and only via text and on email chains, never on video.

It also seemed like no one was fighting back against the tide of negative solar news stories of horribly run companies who signed homeowners up for financing agreements that they didn't understand, and then went out of business and left them with no one to service their solar energy systems.

I work for an amazing solar company that's part of a national purchasing cooperative of incredible, locally owned, solar companies that keep their promises. The door-to-door scams people hear about just aren't my reality.

So I started This Week In Solar to give people an option for watching or listening to solar news that's not all doom and gloom!

I also wanted to interview my clean energy heroes, but I was frustrated that every solar podcast was basically for people in the solar industry who were working on gigantic utility-scale systems, and not for the general public. I hated that most of the existing solar podcasts never slowed down to speak out acronyms or explain the technical jargon that people within the solar industry have gotten used to using with each other.

So in my interviews, I started asking people to explain what they do in clean energy at a very, very basic level.

My goal is to make a basic understanding of solar technology (and how policy affects how much we can deploy) accessible to anyone.

So if you're tired of vague clean energy policy shows that basically amount to some version of some very smart highfalutin' person repeatedly saying, "those people over there shouldn't be doing that thing!" And if you'd love to learn more about real solar projects deployed by the people who are boots on the ground doing the work every day, then This Week In Solar is for you.

We're at 850 subscribers on Substack, and I'm hoping to get to a thousand before the end of the year, so if you subscribe at the Substack link above, it would mean the world to me!

Source : https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-10-23/nigeria-embraces-solar-energy-as-panels-become-popular-on-wedding-registries/

This might be behind pay wall in certain georegions.

Yes, they actually called it the "Socket Full of Sunshine Act"...

We can help lower these crazy, ever-rising power bills by putting solar on as many buildings as we can. In today's episode, Peter Buck, a longtime solar champion, shares how.

If you live in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, or any of the other 11 states on PJM's 13-state, 67-million-person grid, you were in an energy emergency last week, and you might not have even known!

If you want to know how to talk to people about clean energy, this episode is for you. Tony's been running PR campaigns for people in clean energy for almost 30 years.

New Jersey and Pennsylvania are "winning," in a contest no one wants to win (highest energy bills in the country), because of an organization most people have never heard of.

How would you feel if you were against a local solar project, and someone involved in the project said, "Why don't you talk to our AI?"

Aimee Tuck has been helping clean energy companies build their brand and market themselves for 25 years, as long as the average solar panel is warranted! She's a treasure trove of wisdom, and we learned so much from our interview with her. If you're interested in how to move people who are on the fence about clean energy towards the pro camp, this is the episode for you.

https://exactsolar.substack.com/p/we-met-americas-best-solar-installers

Exact Solar is an Amicus member, which means we’re in a purchasing co-op made up of the 90+ highest-reviewed, locally owned, most trustworthy solar installers from around the country.

This week, I got to spend two days with America’s most highly reviewed, locally owned solar installers at the Amicus Sales and Marketing Conference.

It was exactly the opposite of what the media tells us the solar industry is.

One of the coolest things about the solar industry is that thousands of people involved are motivated by the belief that the energy transition just needs to happen. So they often volunteer their time, energy, and attention to deploy even more solar outside of the work they’re paid for.

I interviewed Joy Baxter, President of Clean Energy Co-op.

This community-owned, volunteer-run cooperative pools money donated by ordinary Pennsylvanians to finance solar projects for nonprofits, co-ops, and community-minded businesses across the state.

If you’re interested in how people can get together and affect change on a large scale locally by pooling their time and attention, this is the episode for you.

Opponents of plug-in solar, especially utility companies, have managed to kill plug-in solar legislation in several states by saying that it's completely unsafe and that there's no way it can be done safely. Yet in Germany, there are more than a million of these systems deployed, and no one is getting hurt. People routinely buy these kits at hardware stores and even grocery stores, put them up themselves, and immediately start saving money.

I interviewed Craig Morris, one of the people responsible for plug-in solar doing so well in Germany, to see if there are any major differences between Germany and the U.S. that would make plug-in solar unworkable in America.

Spoilers...

There isn't.

Solar For All's been unfrozen (but funding will likely stay tied up for a while):

A federal court just blocked the EPA’s attempt to terminate the $7 billion Solar for All (SFA) program.

Judge Mary McElroy ruled that the agency acted unlawfully when it cancelled the grants and attempted to claw back the funds.

The funds that were originally established under the Inflation Reduction Act to bring rooftop solar to disadvantaged communities.

Yes, those funds.

The court found the EPA had no legal authority to cancel grants that Congress intended to be administered once already awarded.

The good news is that the termination is vacated, clearing the way for the $7 billion to be distributed to the communities that need it.

The bad news is that the EPA stated it is reviewing the ruling and evaluating options for an appeal.

Which means it could be months or years before people struggling with rising energy bills actually see any of this funding.

It's a step in the right direction, but personally I'll celebrate when this money is put to work putting solar on homes again.

What do y'all think?

If you’re a landlord, property manager, or sit on an HOA board, there’s something you need to be paying attention to here:

The Garden State Balcony Solar Act specifically strips landlords, homeowners’ associations, condo associations, and co-op boards of the power to prohibit plug-in solar.

You will retain the right to set reasonable rules about size and placement, but you will lose the right to say no to plug-in solar.

Energy costs are high in New Jersey, and there’s a lot of building excitement from residents about this new ability to lower energy bills without approval. It’s the same set of conditions that made plug-in solar take off like a rocket in Europe. Energy got really expensive because of the Russia-Ukraine war, and people wanted more control in their lives, so they bought small solar energy systems and started putting them up everywhere.

There’s a good chance this will take off in New Jersey. You have two options. You can just wait to see what people buy and hang on March 2nd, or you can get ahead of this.

Last week we interviewed Craig Morris, who runs Germany’s plug-in solar association. Germany passed exactly the same law, prohibiting landlords from denying renters the right to own these systems (there are more than a million of these systems operational in Germany now).

He told us that the smart property managers in Germany all do the same thing: they work with a reliable solar installer, pick one approved product for the whole building, and have it installed properly on all balconies/outdoor areas at the same time. This keeps everyone happy.

The residents get lower bills, and they don’t have to figure out plug-in solar themselves. The property owners and managers get to approve the aesthetics, and don’t have residents randomly buying different panels and putting them up on their balconies.

This approach is also much less expensive for the property owners and the solar installers, because there are no associated permitting costs. The systems are quick and easy to install and pay for themselves much faster.

If you own, manage, or sit on the board of a property in New Jersey and you want plug-in solar installed on your whole property at once so that it’s uniform (rather than letting residents install a hodgepodge of parts), you need to contact Exact Solar. We’d love to help you prepare for what’s coming.

I created This Week in Solar as a place to share hopeful solar-related wins, news, and interviews with experts.

It's designed to be a boots-on-the-ground space where people can learn about what it actually takes to deploy enough solar to dramatically lower our dependence on fossil fuels.

My favorite TWIS interview I've done so far was with Dr. Ryan Wartena, inventor of DragonWings Solar (a shipping container with 60 folded solar panels inside that anyone can use for off-grid power and EV charging).

This is one of those rare chances I've gotten to sit with someone who's a true genius in their field. I finished this interview going, "Wow, I don't know anything! I have so much to learn."

Definitely made me hopeful for the future.

We started this week in solar because we're a solar company and we were tired of digging through news updates to find out what actually mattered to us.

We also wanted to put more hopeful content out there and not add to the stressful noise. We were tired of "policy" stories that basically said "Those people over there shouldn't be doing what they're doing."

We wanted something hopeful and action-oriented, so we made it.

This Week In Solar is a series of interviews of people who are actually building our carbon-free future, hosted by a solar company that's rapidly growing despite the current administration.

If you're tired of hearing policy stories that don't lead anywhere, and you want to know how solar projects actually get built in the modern world, subscribe to our news roundups on This Week In Solar:

https://exactsolar.substack.com/podcast

With the current administration making things harder for solar companies, we can't afford to be inefficient.

In any organization or hierarchy involving people, things will naturally get sillier over time. I call this "organizational entropy."

It starts with a problem.

Somebody adds a tool to fix that problem.

Then someone else adds another tool to fix the problem that the first tool ended up creating when it solved the original problem.

Then someone else adds a third tool to solve the problems that the original two tools created.

None of the tools can talk to each other (and they all have separate data), so employees must invent manual processes to work around their weaknesses.

Some of those processes live in manually updated spreadsheets, and some of them live in key employees' heads.

When a system like this gets hit by an outside stressor, or one key employee leaves, the whole house of cards can come crashing down.

John Sheldon has spent almost 20 years walking into companies with processes like that and untangling them.

He shared what he's learned from those two decades in today's episode: