3 Learnings from Last Week’s #Solarchat and What it Says about the Future of the Industry

Last week a number of solar super stars on twitter decided to discuss how we can mainstream solar. The conversion happened on twitter.

I’m not going to give a recap or discuss what we talked about, you can find great recaps on the #solarchat here on EcoOutfitters by @ecoOutfitters or Renewable Energy World by @solarfred.

While I was watching the stream of tweets there were three things that really struck me about how well the solar industry is developing.  After all, I don’t notice the geothermal crowd having #geochats.

1. The solar industry is getting organized, really organized. You can see this in how potentially bad stories have been turned around by the solar industry rather quickly.

• Solyndra’s failure was due to the success of the solar industry
• Bill O’Reilly can’t find a solar installer in Long Island? Yah right. 
• The response to Xcel cutting rebates in Colorado and getting them to reinstate the incentives. 

2. The solar industry is constantly looking to improve. If there is one industry in the US that appears to have EVERYTHING going for it, it’s the solar industry. It’s the fastest growing, costs are dropping, public support and interest are at an all time high. Yet, people are still connecting over twitter to discuss what more needs to be done. Why is this important? Many of the critical relationships between vendors, experts and influeners are being formed so that the industry can learn faster, and respond to change more quickly. This is great news.

3. The solar tribe is loud, vocal, and visible. Why is solar getting more attention then other technologies that are more efficient (from a technical perspective) like solar thermal or geothermal heat pumps, or more cost effective (like energy efficiency.This is some the technologistics have a hard time understand about the solar industry and it’s something has quiet a few answers to it. One of the largest is simply visibility. The solar crowd is loud! The people that love solar REALLY LOVE solar and they’re not afraid to show it, talk about, invest their own time in finding and organizing solar lovers. I’ve found  lot of people who work in the geothermal or energy efficiency but even they do not promote the technology as hard core as an amateur who does it because they love the technology, not because they’re getting paid.