When the phone stopped ringing last spring, Mark Dickson, president of Simple Power Solar in Reno, dimmed his sales expectations for 2020.
“We got afraid like everybody else, and thought, what’s going to happen?” said Dickson, noting the company laid off most of its 20-person staff when COVID business impacts took hold nearly a year ago. “We were kind of preparing for the worst.”
So was the solar industry nationwide. The pandemic was initially disruptive as door-to-door marketing became much more difficult.
Residential solar installations were down 23% sequentially in the second quarter of 2020, largely due to shelter-in-place orders that imposed restrictions on selling and installing systems, according to a report from the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie, a renewable energy advisory firm.
Consequently, back in June, Wood Mackenzie forecasted that distributed solar would experience a 31% decline in 2020.
In Q3, however, something unexpected happened: Simple Power’s phones began to light up. Suddenly, the company’s outlook got a lot sunnier.
“The phones just started ringing again and it just kind of went off the hook from there,” Dickson said.
So much so that the Reno-based solar energy company — which serves the greater Reno-Tahoe region — ended 2020 with a million dollars more in sales than it projected, generating $4.9 million in revenue for the year, Dickson said.
Why the surge in demand? Solar panels and battery systems, Dickson feels, had renewed appeal for people spending far more time in their homes having less certainty the lights will stay on.
“The virus itself, I think, got people thinking, ‘how do I become more independent?’” Dickson said. “In the very beginning (of the pandemic), they didn’t know if their power was going to be shut off. So, I think there’s a little bit of fear, which ends up actually benefiting our industry, especially when we offer battery storage as well.”
Solar power companies also saw the ripple effect of cooped-up homeowners surveying their surroundings, inside and out, with a more critical eye, Dickson said.
“I think the whole remodel market took off last year and people were going, ‘hey, maybe we should do this project and put solar up there?’” Dickson said. “It was a good surprise.”
FEDERAL TAX CREDITS EXTENDED
Simple Power Solar wasn’t the only regional solar panel installer in area that saw a boost in sales during the latter half of 2020.
Great Basin Solar, a Reno-based solar energy contractor that serves all of Northern Nevada, had its “busiest year to date,” said owner Travis Miller, who launched the company in 2018.
Miller said the federal solar tax credit — the investment tax credit (ITC) — was a big driver for sales last year. The ITC allows customer to deduct 26% of the cost of installing solar energy system from their…