October 2017

I used to joke that the only change I like is the kind found underneath a couch cushion; however, situational change can often present new opportunities and turn out to be for the better. As you might know by now, this October issue is Solar Industry’s final print magazine. We’ve decided to change with the [...]

Remember January 2008? The U.S. presidential primaries were just getting under way. “Breaking Bad” premiered on AMC. Most importantly, a brand-new B2B magazine all about solar – a sector poised for extraordinary growth and momentous changes – launched. Although I took Solar Industry’s official editorial reins in January 2010, I was deeply involved with the [...]

I started working as a solar industry analyst 10 years ago, and over the last decade, I have been a direct witness of the industry’s development and expansion. The growth has been extraordinary and surpassed the most optimistic forecasts, including my own! Back in 2007, less than 5 GW was installed globally; last year, it was [...]

As Solar Industry changes from print to online-only, I think about other changes to our industry over the years. Not long ago, most of this did not exist. And, if we aren’t careful, if we don’t aggressively and collectively invest in public policy to support the continued growth of local solar and storage, much of [...]

Way back when the organization had a website that looked like it was created by a high-schooler with a copy of Dreamweaver, 2008, we both started working at the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA): Katherine in February and Justin in July. The U.S. industry was still small but starting to pick up steam, as entrepreneurs [...]

The solar industry has undergone a tremendous evolution in the course of the last decade. Below we outline some of the more notable developments, with a focus on project financing in the U.S. In 2007, the largest solar photovoltaic project in the world was an 11 MW project in Portugal, called Serpa, that cost EUR [...]

From an industry lifecycle perspective, we expected the evolution of community solar to be relatively fast. From introducing a new model of distributed generation designed to serve an expanding market vastly larger than rooftop solar could address, to attaining effective scale through ubiquitous utility and consumer participation, we projected a steep curve and an apex [...]

The global solar industry has had quite a ride the last 10 years, but as with any industry, it is the peaks and valleys that make the journey an interesting one. We saw large sums of venture capital (VC) invested into thin-film, CSP, CPV and other would-be usurpers to crystalline silicon’s throne. China asserted itself [...]