This Week in Solar

Exact Solar
  • 4.3 (15)
  • News
  • Updated Weekly

A weekly look at what's new in solar, brought to you by Exact Solar. Clean energy news, policy updates, and stories that matter. exactsolar.substack.com

  1. 4d ago

    NJ and PA #1 and #3 for Energy Price Increases

    Over the last three years, New Jersey has seen the biggest electricity rate increases of any state. Over the last five years, Pennsylvania has seen the third-biggest rate increase. Listen to this episode here, or on: YouTubeApple PodcastsSpotifyThis is according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) report from July 2026. This federal agency tracks what Americans pay for power across the country and shows how bad things have gotten for New Jersey and Pennsylvania ratepayers: New Jersey: up 36.8% in three years. That’s more than double the national average of 15.4%.Pennsylvania: up 58.5% in five years, almost double the national average of 32.4%.In the plainest terms possible, this means that if you live in New Jersey, and you used to pay $100/month for electricity, and have changed nothing about your life or electricity usage in the last three years, you’re now paying $136.80 per month for the same service that has not improved or changed in any way. In Pennsylvania, if the same scenario is true, then you’re paying $158.50 per month, when you were paying $100 in 2021. Now, it’s an imperfect comparison to go by percentage rise, because New Jersey’s energy was more expensive than Pennsylvania’s to begin with. But the fact remains that energy bills are going up at record rates. It’s especially bad in the Northeast. This Week In Solar is always brought to you by Exact Solar, your locally owned, twenty-one-year-old solar installer for Pennsylvania and New Jersey. As we just said, New Jersey and Pennsylvania are in the top 3 for the fastest-rising energy costs in the nation, and no one has a good plan to fix it. The only thing you can do to take control is opt out by putting solar on your home. Exact Solar has several different ways to help you do so that will meet your financial situation. You can: Pay cash up frontFinance and own the system over time with a loanOr put $0 down with our PPA that will dramatically lower your energy bill as soon as your solar energy system is operational, and lock in the same price for power for the next 25 years.We only work with ethical financiers that we trust, backed by the Amicus Solar Cooperative. Exact Solar will never pressure you to sign up for an unethical financing option that you barely understand. If you live in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, we’d love to show you how much you can save by going solar. Show Me How Much I Can Save With Solar

    NJ and PA #1 and #3 for Energy Price Increases

  2. 6d ago

    Can AI Change People’s Minds About Solar?

    Aaron talks with Eli Andrews, founder and CEO of civicIQ, a nonprofit that uses AI to help solar, wind, and battery projects earn support from rural communities. Eli also teaches sustainability and strategic leadership at Penn State. If you want to know what makes people actually change their minds about solar (and why arguing with them usually isn’t it), this is the episode for you. Listen to this episode here, or on: YouTubeApple PodcastsSpotifyConnect with Eli on LinkedIn here. Learn more about civicIQ at civiciq.org. Want to reach Eli directly? Email him at eli@civiciq.org. Expect to learn:How an experimental AI moved more than 1 in 5 solar opponents off the “no” column in just five interactions (and why where a fact comes from may matter more than the fact itself).The one question developers should ask a rural town before anyone shows up to a zoning meeting (hint: it isn’t “are you for or against solar?”).How a nonprofit CEO with zero coding experience used three different AIs to build his own clean-powered AI on a home computer in three days.Quote from the episode:“We live here. This [solar] is going to be part of our lives for the next 30 years. You might have 30 years of revenue stream here, but we’re going to be living with this thing.” — Eli Andrews

    Can AI Change People’s Minds About Solar?

  3. Oct 2

    Hundreds of Homeowners Are Showing off Their Solar This Weekend

    What’s newThis weekend, October 2-4, the American Solar Energy Society’s National Solar Tour is hosting its National Solar Tour. This means that homeowners with solar are opening their homes to the public. This is one of our favorite times of the year at Exact Solar, and we are very proud to be a sponsor. If you’re a homeowner interested in going solar but you’re still on the fence, this is a great chance to get all of your questions answered by real people with solar on their roofs (not by companies who are trying to sell solar). One of Exact Solar’s customers, Curt Sawyer, is hosting a tour at his home in Doylestown, in person, on Saturday, October 3rd, from 10 a.m.- 2 p.m. You can RSVP and find his address on the ASES Solar Tour website here: See Curt Sawyer’s Home Solar Energy System In Person Curt has a very large home solar energy system (21 kW), because his home is fully electrified and he and his wife drive EVs. His system is large enough that his local electric company pays him, not the other way around. If you’re planning to see Curt’s system in person and you want to learn more about his system first, you can find the interview we did with him and his virtual video solar tour at these links: Curt (Curtis) Sawyer — Doylestown, PA How it Feels to Own Your Energy With Solar: Curtis Sawyer If you’re not in Pennsylvania or New Jersey, and you’d rather participate virtually, you can find a tour near you at map.nationalsolartour.org If you can’t make it to any of these this weekend because you have plans, no worries! Exact Solar has put together video solar tour interviews with several of our customers over the last four years. You can find them all individually listed below, or go to the Exact Solar Solar Tours page to see them all in one place.

    Hundreds of Homeowners Are Showing off Their Solar This Weekend

  4. Sep 30

    Nobody Goes Solar Because of Product Specs: Aimee Tuck

    Aaron talks with Aimee Tuck, founder and principal of Corbae Creative, a branding, design, and marketing agency that works with solar, energy storage, and grid modernization companies. She’s been doing this for 25 years (since Aaron was 8 years old), and she recently wrote the book on it, which you can find here: Powerful Branding Screenshot from Corbae Creative’s Website If you’ve ever had someone tell you that your company’s website is too complex, or just blankly stare at you when you try to explain what your company does, this episode’s for you. Listen to this episode here, or on: YouTubeApple PodcastsSpotifyConnect with Aimee on LinkedIn here. Read more about Aimee at Corbae Creative. This Week In Solar is always brought to you by Exact Solar, your locally owned, twenty-one-year-old solar installer for Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Aimee and I spent a lot of this episode talking about how a company’s brand is made up of the feelings that people have upon encountering that company’s public presence, reviews, and testimonials. Companies that make people feel good about them at scale by doing great work over a long period of time have great brands. Exact Solar’s been installing solar in Pennsylvania and New Jersey for twenty-one years. Most of our work comes from people who had a great experience and told somebody else about us. If you’re interested in saving money on your electric bill as electricity prices climb to record highs, Exact Solar would love to help. Show Me How Much I Can Save With Solar Expect to learn:What does and doesn’t qualify as brand or brandingOne thing that damages a company faster than bad advertising ever couldWhat to put in an ad if you want anyone to remember itQuote from the episode:“Most people think about energy about eight minutes a year. That’s just about enough time to pay their electric bill.” — Aimee Tuck

    Nobody Goes Solar Because of Product Specs: Aimee Tuck

  5. Sep 25

    We Met America’s Best Solar Installers

    What’s newExact 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. Listen to this episode here, or on: YouTubeApple PodcastsSpotifyNobody in that room was talking about sending out door-to-door salespeople to lock customers into predatory contracts. They were talking about how to make sure that they’ll still be there in 20 years, so they can answer the phone to service their warranties when customers call decades from now. If you’re shopping for solar, here’s why that matters: The last couple of years have been brutal. SunPower filed for bankruptcy in 2024. That same year, Titan Solar shut its doors overnight and liquidated. Sunnova went under in 2025, followed by PosiGen, which served homeowners right here in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. This spring, Freedom Forever filed for bankruptcy. Those companies were among the largest solar companies in the country. Each one of those bankruptcies left thousands of homeowners with no one to call if something goes wrong with their solar energy system. That’s why if you’re thinking about solar, you should go solar with a locally owned, trustworthy solar installer like Exact Solar, or any other Amicus member company if you live outside of Pennsylvania or New Jersey, because they’re thinking about this problem differently. Here’s how these companies are planning to stick around for the long haul:

    We Met America’s Best Solar Installers

  6. Sep 23

    This Volunteer-Run Organization Funds Solar Projects Banks Can’t: Joy Baxter

    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. In today’s episode, Aaron interviews 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. Listen to this episode here, or on: YouTubeApple PodcastsSpotifyLearn about the Clean Energy Co-op, or become a member, at cleanenergy.coop. See the Valley Greene Apartments project (the Co-op’s largest to date, which Exact Solar is building). Expect to learn:How a one-time $100 membership can help you crowdfund solar in your community.Why almost no energy supplier will lock in your electricity price for 25 years, and how an all-volunteer co-op can do exactly that for the buildings it works with.What researchers found when they studied climate anxiety (doing something about it by yourself doesn’t seem to help, but doing it with other people does).Quote from the episode:“Maybe the shift I hope for isn’t in the technology, but in the mindset — that we don’t have to just keep paying the man, and that we can produce our own electricity.” — Joy Baxter

    This Volunteer-Run Organization Funds Solar Projects Banks Can’t: Joy Baxter

  7. Sep 18

    Plug-In Solar Will Be Legal in New Jersey March 1st, 2027. What Exactly Does That Mean?

    What’s newThe Garden State Balcony Solar Act (S2368/A4836) passed both chambers of the New Jersey Legislature in late June. New Jersey’s new governor, Mikie Sherrill, signed it into law on September 1. It was written with a six-month delay to allow the Board of Public Utilities time to get ready. This means that as of March 1, 2027, any New Jersey resident will be legally allowed to buy a plug-in/balcony solar inverter, buy a few solar panels, set them out in the sun and plug them into the inverter, and plug the inverter into a normal wall outlet. Listen to this episode here, or on: YouTubeApple PodcastsSpotifyThe system will immediately start feeding electricity into their home and saving them money. There’s no permit, no utility approval, and no permission from a landlord or HOA required. To be legal in New Jersey, a plug-in solar system has to check five boxes. It must: Put out no more than 1,200 wattsPlug into a standard 120-volt outletSit on your side of the electric meter and offset your own usageBe listed or certified to UL 3700, the safety standard written specifically for plug-in solarInclude a feature that shuts it off during a blackout, so it can’t send power onto a dead line where a lineworker might be workingAnything putting 400 watts or less into the outlet is exempt from any listing or code provision that would require you to change your building’s wiring or electrical panel. The law allows up to 1200 Watts of solar without approval. Plug-in systems are exempt from interconnection agreements and from net metering rules entirely. Anyone who maxes out that total could save roughly $50 a month on their bill, somewhere between $500-$600 per year depending on how much energy the system outputs. One of the plug-in solar inverters costs somewhere between $300 and $400. You can get good quality solar panels on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist for $100 to $200 each. That means that a plug-in solar system will likely run you between $500 and $1,000, depending on how big it is. It’ll pay for itself in less than 2 to 3 years, just with the avoided cost of electricity.

    Plug-In Solar Will Be Legal in New Jersey March 1st, 2027. What Exactly Does That Mean?

  8. Sep 16

    How Great Solar Companies Can Get Even Better: John Sheldon

    Aaron talks with John Sheldon, founder of GreatSun Consulting, who has spent almost twenty years inside solar companies as: An installer A salesperson An operator (Now) a consultant who solar companies call when things start to fall apart.If you want to know why growing solar companies start to fail (and what it actually takes to fix the mess before it costs you customers) this is the episode for you. Listen to this episode here, or on: YouTubeApple PodcastsSpotifyConnect with John on LinkedIn here. Learn about his consulting work at greatsunconsulting.com. This Week In Solar is always brought to you by Exact Solar, your 21-year-old, locally owned solar installer for New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Right now, Exact Solar has a PPA backed by the Amicus Solar Cooperative that can put solar on your home for $0 down, dramatically lower your energy bill, and lock in the same price for energy for the next 25 years. If you live in New Jersey or Pennsylvania and you’re fed up with paying ever-rising utility bills, it’s time to see if your home qualifies for Exact Solar’s PPA. Book your Free Consultation With Exact Solar’s Team Expect to learn:Why the companies that call John for more leads, better salespeople, or a new CRM rarely have a lead, salesperson, or CRM problem.What “organizational entropy” looks like (it involves 30 separate spreadsheets, one key person’s memories, and processes nobody can explain beyond “we’ve done it like this since the dinosaurs”). Where AI actually earns its keep in a solar company (and where John has watched it quietly wreck a business’s finances).Quote from the episode:“I don’t think it’s a technology problem so much that they have. It’s a clarity problem. They just lack visibility at scale.” — John Sheldon

    How Great Solar Companies Can Get Even Better: John Sheldon
See All (138)

4.3
out of 5
15 Ratings

About

A weekly look at what's new in solar, brought to you by Exact Solar. Clean energy news, policy updates, and stories that matter. exactsolar.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Exact Solar
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    138
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Exact Solar
  • Show Website
    This Week in Solar

You Might Also Like