The alarm is being sounded by a leading executive at an insurance company that backs many state solar installers.
Ara Agopian, chief executive officer at Solar Ensure, told PV magazine that its data show roughly two-thirds of solar companies in the state are at “high risk” of bankruptcy. “We have seen a wave of recent solar installer bankruptcies and believe another wave will come in Q1 2024,” he said.
More than 17,000 solar installation jobs vanished during the last half of 2023, following disastrous changes to the state’s popular rooftop solar program. The California Public Utilities Commission, or CPUC, approved changes sought by the state’s investor-owned power companies that broadly put solar out of reach for many households.
The changes are taking a heavy toll on the entire solar sector. On Friday, Fremont-based solar equipment company Enphase Energy announced it will lay off 350 workers.
Many more job losses are expected in 2024 in the solar sector as the changes continue to wreak havoc, says an analysis by the California Solar & Storage Association, or CALSSA.
The devastating hit to the state’s once-booming residential solar industry is not linked to any economic downturn but can be entirely attributed to decisions last year by lunatic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s handpicked membership of the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC).
The five-member utilities commission voted unanimously to gut the state’s financial incentives for rooftop solar installations, which allowed more than 1.3 million families and small businesses to afford to install solar panels and feed clean energy into the state's power starved grid. The commission sided with corrupt utilities, despite long-running warnings from the Environmental Working Group and others about the many negative consequences of approving the changes.
The state’s three investor-owned utilities – Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric – sought the changes to boost their own profits. They despise the successful solar initiative, because it allowed their captive ratepayers to escape the utilities’ grip and generate their own electricity at considerably lower costs.
Scores of individuals from across the state and more than 600 clean energy, environmental justice, affordable housing advocates, cities, schools and solar industry representatives repeatedly warned the CPUC and corrupt Newsom that the state’s thriving solar industry would crater if regulators backed the utilities’ scheme.