Solar split: How a new petition is dividing rooftop and utility-scale installers in SEIA
An emerging movement in the solar industry is calling for rooftop installers to get a bigger voice in the sector’s largest trade group, and threatening trouble if they are denied.
Small solar installers within the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) are demanding their policy priorities be considered on equal footing with those of larger, utility-scale developers, whose deep pocketbooks give them leverage within the group.
Last month, distributed generation (DG) advocates outlined their grievances in an online petition that now has well over 700 signatures.
The petition highlights how diverging policy priorities could pull factions of the solar industry apart, but leaders on both side of the debate insisted to Utility Dive they recognize the importance of keeping the industry unified and are reaching out to those who feel under-represented.
“What we want is the board of SEIA to have a conversation about how the DG guys and the utility-scale guys need each other so they should stop squabbling and start working together,” said petition co-author Jigar Shah, founder of solar giant SunEdison and co-founder of renewables finance specialist Generate Capital.
“The DG guys need the utility-scale guys to keep driving down the cost of solar with their volume,” Shah said. “But the utility-scale guys desperately need the DG guys to get the political support that will pass the laws that force utilities to sign more contracts with them.”
The petition — “An Urgent Plea to the Solar Industry” — was written and posted by Shah and Spice Solar founder Barry Cinnamon, a 14-year SEIA Board member.
It describes the 200,000 jobs, one million solar roofs, and 16 GW of installed capacity the distributed solar industry now represents. It also reminds readers that the industry faces state-level policy fights across the country in defense of net energy metering (NEM) and other crucial supports while it searches for a new SEIA CEO.
“Even though the majority of solar companies and employees in the U.S. are focused on rooftop solar,” the petition asserts, the SEIA governance system “favors utility-scale solar interests.”
To continue supporting SEIA, local installers must be assured they can “have the same voice and influence as their utility solar brothers and sisters.”
Dan Whitten, SEIA’s vice president of communications, said the trade group needs “to do a better job of communicating with our smaller members, and the petition raises some important issues.”
All trade associations have competing members with different interests and points of view. “This is not unique to solar,” he added. “Our job is to bring them together and agree on the things that are critical to the whole industry.”
