Can US Solar Thrive Without Tax Credits? Here's What I'm Hearing from Installers.

The question I've been asked more than any other over the past few months is whether US solar can continue to grow without tax credits.

It's a fair question!

The policy landscape has changed, financing has become more challenging and many installers are working harder to close the same number of projects. There's no point pretending otherwise. At the same time, the long-term direction of travel hasn't changed.

Bloomberg Philanthropies' recent US$285 million commitment to accelerating clean energy deployment is another reminder that investment, innovation and confidence in the sector continue to grow.

The question isn't whether solar has a future. It's how we build it faster.

So I've been spending more time talking to installers, because the people with the clearest view of the market are the people selling solar every day.

I recently sat down with Dan Johnson, General Manager of Six Rivers Solar, for the latest episode of The OpenSolar Podcast. Dan is operating in exactly the same market as everyone else. The same financing environment, the same policy changes and the same customer uncertainty. Yet his business continues to grow. What are businesses like Dan's doing differently?

The answer wasn't really what I expected.

Over the last twenty years, our industry has done an extraordinary job of reducing the cost of solar. Panels are cheaper. Batteries are cheaper. Software has become more powerful. Installation is faster and more efficient than it has ever been. But while we've made solar cheaper to build, we've also made it more complicated to buy…specially in the US.

Today's homeowner isn't simply deciding whether to install solar. They're comparing finance products, trying to understand battery economics, navigating changing utility tariffs, weighing up export payments and making sense of multiple proposals that often look very similar.

It's a much more complicated purchasing decision than it was a decade ago.

I don't think the industry talks about that enough. One observation from Dan really stayed with me.

"Everything you say before you show the price is building value. Once you've shown the price, you're justifying cost."

At first glance, it's a lesson about selling batteries. I think it's really a lesson about customer confidence. Most homeowners don't decide against solar because the technology stopped making sense. More often, they lose confidence somewhere along the buying journey.

The process becomes confusing, momentum slows, life gets busy, and a project that probably would have happened quietly slips away.

That's not a demand problem, it's a buying problem.

Dan shared another example that reinforced this. Rather than waiting for new commercial enquiries, his team went back to businesses they had already spoken to, creating urgency around a genuine policy deadline. The result was three years' worth of commercial work signed in a single month.

The market itself hadn’t changed, what changed was how they showed up and executed.

That's why I think the industry's next challenge looks very different from its last.

The last twenty years were about making solar more affordable.

The next twenty years will be about making solar easier to buy.

That means better customer experiences, clearer proposals, simpler financing, faster follow-up and reducing every piece of friction that stands between a homeowner wanting solar and actually signing a contract.

Technology alone won't solve that problem, good businesses will. It's also why we've spent the last year focusing so heavily on sales and conversion tools at OpenSolar. Because better systems help installers communicate value more clearly, reduce customer drop-off and convert more of the opportunities they're already generating.

If you'd like to hear the full conversation with Dan Johnson from Six Rivers Solar, the latest episode of The OpenSolar Podcast is now live.

If you're interested in seeing how we're helping installers tackle exactly these challenges, join one of our upcoming Sales webinars, where we'll walk through the latest OpenSolar tools designed to reduce friction, shorten sales cycles and help more homeowners confidently say yes to solar.

Because after speaking with installers across the US, I'm more optimistic than ever.

The opportunity hasn't disappeared, the next stage of growth simply depends on making it easier for customers to buy into it.