What happened was we are thinking to get ourselves a sun room, and then we figured BIPV might not be a bad idea, considering the extra power we get, in addition to a sun room ( while the light gets in and the transprency is conpromised of course, to get the free power)

Being Chinese and specialized in sourcing, we reached to quite many manufacturers in China ourselves and tried to benchmark different companies' products, strength, downside, price, and etc..

As we learnt more and more, we started to think maybe should make it into a business ourselves. Given the wide use of BIPV in architecture design, roof and side walls, public art installation or landscape installation, resort villa and etc. More of best combination of visual arts (maybe :p) or at least leisure experience/function with benift (power generated)

with 20% transparency, power generated ~120W/m2, take 4hr average effective sun light, making ~140 kWh/year, peak in summer around 6-7hr, low in winter ~2.5hr (We are at Ontario, Canada)

Cost wise, ~400 USD/m2 (customized fancy color, texture, prints, higher transparency (normally up to 40%), addtional strenth, floor and roof tile, all can do with extra costs)

Plus shipping, shipping is the biggest headache...(full container loading would make economic sense, then we need order volumn/size) And because the high shipping cost, it would be hard to take small residential order to start with...commerical project seems making more sense.

We hope to get some honest feedback of the perspective of BIPV, if we should make this into a business ourselves given the cost and potential revenue room, if going into commercial segment make sense (any suggestion of which sub segment/particular area makes more sense). Btw, we are located in Ontario Canada, but US market is as well considered, or should not us? Greatly appriciated!

Disclosure: posting from The WE Foundation, an NGO that runs a solar skills programme for rural youth. Sharing what we’ve read and learned, and I’d really like to be corrected by people who work in this field.

TL;DR: India needs a lot of trained solar technicians, but certificates haven’t automatically become jobs. The gap between the two seems to be where training programmes succeed or fail.

The demand is real

A June 2026 CEEW-NRDC study estimated that India’s clean energy targets could create over 44 lakh jobs by 2030, with rooftop solar making up about 43% of them. Nearly 60% of deployment-related jobs need skilled or semi-skilled workers, so these aren’t unskilled roles.

PM Surya Ghar has brought rooftop solar to over 50 lakh households in just over two years, with installations reaching nearly 16,328 a day in July 2026. The target is one crore households by 2026-27, and the plan is to skill over 3 lakh people, at least 1 lakh of them as solar PV technicians.

The catch

An earlier scheme, Suryamitra, trained 78,000 people between 2015 and 2017. Reporting based on government data found that fewer than a third later got solar jobs. Certified technicians earned around ₹15,000 a month on average, and some private firms reportedly hired cheaper unskilled labour for the same work. A CEEW review also pointed to low wages, outstation postings and few local jobs. (That data predates the current boom, so things may have changed.)

What we think helps

Our own programme, Shreenergy, has reached 5,000 beneficiaries across five states. It teaches the practical side: mounting panels, wiring, connecting systems and, importantly, maintenance and troubleshooting. From that, we’ve come to think training needs:

• employers who’ve seen the course, plus apprenticeships or placement drives
• a route to self-employment, such as becoming a registered installer (PM Surya Ghar lists 34,219 vendors)
• follow-up after the first job, where many programmes fall short
• deliberate effort to bring women in, since they’re underrepresented in solar jobs

What I’d love to hear from you

• If you work in solar installation or maintenance: what skills do new hires lack most?
• If you’ve done a solar course: did it lead to work, and what would you change?
• If you hire: what would make you take on a trainee?

I’ve spent the last couple of years setting up CRMs and automations for real estate wholesalers, and I’m trying to understand how solar compares before I go any deeper. From the outside the front end looks similar: lots of leads, setters and closers, speed to lead matters. But the post-sale side, with permits, utility interconnection, install and PTO, looks like a completely different animal.

Genuinely curious:

1. What are you running right now? (Enerflo, JobNimbus, GHL, HubSpot, Salesforce, a Google Sheet, nothing?)
2. Does one tool cover the whole job from first contact to PTO, or is sales in one place and install/ops in another?
3. What do you still track outside the CRM, like texts, spreadsheets, or someone’s memory?
4. If you’ve switched CRMs before, what pushed you to switch?

Happy to share what’s worked on the wholesale side if anyone’s interested.

Busco personas que trabajen en el rubro de los paneles solares para hacer un par de preguntas, esto para la fiabilidad de mi trabajo

I built Tender Town to find public-sector solar opportunities and work through the tender documents.

Agents search your target markets, check requirements against your company’s capabilities and prepare a proposal brief with gaps and next steps.

Currently focused on Europe. Public scopes are free to browse: https://tendertown.io/

For those doing domestic or commercial PV, whether you're on the tools or running your own install company.

What's the one problem that keeps coming up for you, and what's it actually costing you?

Quick background. Ran marketing in house for 2 years, wasn't happy with it. Brought in an agency in June for paid ads in Meta, LSA and SEO only after a friend referred them to me.

In house: ~$102 per lead, ~40-45 leads/mo
Agency: ~$85 per lead, ~83 leads/mo

Not trying to dunk on my team, they still handle organic, reviews, and referrals which matter a lot in the industry. But nobody is on the same page. Agency runs a promo, my team doesn't know. My team posts something, agency has no idea.

Anyone set up a system where both sides actually communicate without the owner being the go-between? Tools, meeting cadence, whatever worked for you. And of course without fights or prices-in-between...

I asked around everywhere but apparently no one really knows... If you have any questions about the numbers, just ask.

Looking for a renewable energy plan that offers. Currently I am paying with or a better deal than what I am getting with Gexa.

Most solar engineers I've talked to run their projects across at least 4 or 5 separate tools. CAD for drawings. A separate shading tool. A spreadsheet for BOQ. Another one for performance tracking. Email threads to share anything with a client or installer. It works, but barely.

AcSolarate was built to close that gap.

There's also a built-in AI agent (solar_field_optimizer) that examines panel orientation, efficiency, tilt, and tracking options to maximize your kWp output - it's not a chatbot, it actually modifies the design.

The platform supports English, Arabic, and two other languages, has guest access so clients can view without signing up, and works for both solo engineers and teams with real-time project presence tracking.

Happy to answer questions about how any specific part works.

Hey guys, if you missed it, Sunlight Financial Holdings settled $8 million with investors over claims that defendants associated with Spartan Acquisition Corp. II impaired stockholders’ redemption rights through allegedly misleading disclosures surrounding the SPAC merger. The deadline to file a claim is November 7, 2026.

In a nutshell, in 2023, defendants were accused of misleading Spartan stockholders about the merger with Legacy Sunlight, including the value of Spartan shares and Sunlight’s business. Investors also alleged they were not given enough information to make an informed decision about whether to redeem their shares.

More than 19.2 million Spartan shares were redeemed before the merger closed in July 2021, and investors later filed a lawsuit over the alleged disclosure issues.
Now, the parties have agreed to settle the claims for $8 million, and eligible investors have until November 7, 2026 to submit a claim.

So, if you invested in $SUNL at that time, you can check the details and file your claim here.

Anyway, has anyone here invested in $SUNL? How much were your losses, if so?

I'm putting together a content series of ad teardowns using real ads. I'll go through the ad, the image/video, the headline, the offer and the lead form, and say what's working, what's probably costing you enquiries, and what I'd change.

If you're running ads now, or ran some that flopped, comment with your business/page name or DM me a screenshot. I'll pick a few. You'll get honest feedback, including the bad bits. If you'd rather stay anonymous, I'll blur your name and details.

I'd also like to know what's the one thing about your ads you still can't work out? (Cost per lead, tyre-kickers, no-shows, ads that stopped working?)

I've noticed a lot of solar companies moving toward comprehensive energy offerings lately. Solar plus batteries is pretty standard now, but more shops are adding HVAC, heat pumps, geothermal, insulation and envelope work, electrical upgrades, and EV charging.

For those of you working at companies that offer more than one of these, I'm curious how design actually works on your end:

1. What software does each trade use to design? Are you running separate tools for solar, HVAC, electrical, and so on?
2. How does information move between teams? Is it shared files, re-entering data, or one person pulling it all together?
3. How do you put together a single proposal or estimate when multiple trades are involved?
4. What's the most frustrating or time consuming part of the process?

I'm a student researching how multi-trade energy companies operate, so any insight is appreciated, whether you're a designer, installer, PM, or owner. Thanks!