Energy Transition

How I Came to Believe that Training the Next Generation of Solar Leaders is the Most Important Problem I Can Solve

In this post, I tell the story of what it was like leading a solar developer and EPC through a major business pivot from struggling residential installer to a national top 50 commercial and utility EPC and developer. Like many solar businesses, we walked the tightrope between explosive success and catastrophic failure for years. In the process, I learned that no investment of time or energy has a better ROI for a company than investing in your people.

The solar industry is succeeding despite itself - fires, grid issues, abandoned projects and more. As renewables become synonymous with “power,” we won’t be able to afford to make as many high profile mistakes. We have momentum, but the energy transition is not fated to be successful. If we want to become the 21st century’s source of energy, we need to develop 21st century training, and prepare our teams to execute.

The business case for better training is clear - solar companies go bankrupt every year due to lack of execution capacity. So how did we get here, and why haven’t we already invested in better systems for training our teams?

Lack of training for solar sales is sandbagging the energy transition. Australia points to what’s possible - residential solar at 1.20/W pre-incentive.