Is Solar at Risk of Becoming as Trusted as a Used Car Salesman?

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Just when I think we’re over negative Solyndra press, several bad solar marketing and business stories have come to my attention within the same week. If this trend continues, the entire solar industry will suffer both politically and financially…again. * Incident #1. Last week, my friend Deep Patel, CEO of Go Green Solar, called me and told me tha

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Re: Is Solar at Risk of Becoming as Trusted as a Used Car Salesman?

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Incident #3. Finally, on Wednesday, Todd Woody, a well known solar business reporter for the New York Times and Forbes, published “Solar Industry Anxious Over Defective Panels.” There, he described several solar projects that have received defective panels. I’ve heard about the same issues anecdotally through my installer friends, but when the issue is published in The New York Times? Not good.

Suddenly, the entire industry has a problem. Now, anyone considering solar — utility scale or residential — is going to question whether they’re going to be ripped off with defective panels. And that lack of trust is then going to lead to more customers wanting to delay their purchase decision or to cancel it entirely.

On top of that, any oil/gas/nuke lobbyist can now print Woody’s article, send it to policymakers, and say, “See? We told you solar wasn’t reliable. But you can count on gas and nukes. It pollutes and it’s dangerous, but hey, at least it’s reliable.”

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