The AI Boom Can Give Rooftop Solar a New Pitch
The renewables industry could play a key role in helping the electricity grid combat its biggest challenge in decades.
An industry in peril.
Photographer: Sandy Huffaker/Bloomberg
Rooftop solar has often been sold as a way of going off-grid. Facing a crisis, it needs a new pitch: Helping that same grid cope with the demands of the artificial intelligence boom.
Federal credits for rooftop solar are poised on a knife edge in the giant tax bill wending its way through Congress. Current Senate language looks set to chop them to zero in short order, although one Senator indicated this week that some unspecified relief may yet surface in future drafts. Absent a significant revision, that the solar-allergic House majority could live with, this would be the third big blow to the industry in as many years; the others being cuts to state incentives, particularly in California, and higher interest rates. Installations fell last year for the first time since 2018. Shares of the number one installer, Sunrun Inc., are down by almost a quarter so far this year and almost 90% over the past four years. Two large firms, Sunnova Energy International Inc. and loan provider Solar Mosaic LLC, filed for bankruptcy earlier this month.