YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE
New policies, new technology mean bright outlook for solar industry
Affordable Solar — New Mexico’s largest residential, commercial and utility-scale installation company — is doubling down on industrywide bets of spectacular market growth ahead.
The homegrown company is investing $7.5 million to nearly double the size of its Albuquerque facilities in preparation for what company CEO Ryan Centerwall says could be up to 500% growth in the domestic solar industry over the next decade.
“Progressive federal, state and local policies, combined with broad corporate and consumer acceptance of renewable energy, is driving major growth in the solar industry,” Centerwall told the Journal. “We may be looking at 500% expansion in solar over the next 10 years.”
That includes a surge of demand for battery storage systems that can keep solar-generated electricity flowing when the sun isn’t shining.
“We’re looking at 100% growth just in battery storage,” Centerwall said.
To prepare, Affordable’s facility expansion includes a major thrust into battery technology with a new manufacturing operation to design and assemble battery systems for all types of solar installations. It plans to renovate a 30,000-square-foot building on 3.5 acres of land it’s acquiring at 3900 Singer NE along the north Interstate 25 industrial corridor.
The expansion, backed by $625,000 in Local Economic Development Act funding from the state and city, will allow Affordable to consolidate about 17,000 square feet of space it now occupies in three different facilities around Albuquerque into a single location. And the company expects to hire 70 more employees over the next few years, growing its local workforce from 141 now to more than 200.
The ramp up by Affordable reflects an industry-wide boom in solar development in New Mexico and across the country.
The U.S. solar industry installed 19.2 gigawatts of solar generating capacity around the country in 2020 — a 43% jump over 2019 that set an all-time annual record in installations, according to U.S. Solar Market Insight 2020, a yearin-review report released in March by the national Solar Energy Industries Association and consulting firm Wood MacKenzie
Residential and utility-scale solar development both surged last year to record levels, with residential up 11% and utility-scale installations jumping by 65%, according to the report. And Wood MacKenzie expects a lot more growth
over the next decade, with 324 GW of new solar capacity projected to come online nationwide, representing more than three times the total amount of solar installed across the country as of 2020.
That’s a more conservative outlook than Centerwall’s 500% growth projection. But it indicates broad industry expectation for a stellar decade ahead, beginning with another record year in 2021.
“This is already shaping up to be our best year ever,” Centerwall said. “We see continuous growth in the next few years, with annual installations in the U.S. reaching about 40 to 45 GW per year by 2025.”
Top-down push
Today’s growth and the expectations for a coming, prolonged boom are driven by many factors. That includes state and federal policies to aggressively pursue renewable energy, rapidly-growing markets as solar generation becomes cheaper and more widely accepted as a dependable source of electricity, and technology improvement in things like battery storage that can greatly enhance the benefits of solar systems.
President Joe Biden has made combatting climate change a top national priority, and his administration is pushing a broad range of new policies to potentially set the country on a path to non-carbon electric generation by 2035. That could include a new, national clean electricity standard — which would require utility companies to transition to carbon-free electricity — plus the possibility of a carbon tax, or cap-andtrade system, to encourage all industries to reduce and eventually eliminate greenhouse gas emissions.
Biden’s infrastructure development plans call for hundreds of billions of investment in electrical vehicle infrastructure, both to encourage and assist the auto industry in moving to electric vehicles, and to build a massive network of electric charging stations around the country.
They also call for retrofitting existing homes and buildings with energysaving technology and electric-based heating systems, massive transmission development to open up a lot more land for solar and other renewable development, tax incentives to speed renewable energy deployment, and huge investments in research and development to improve current renewable technologies and build new systems.
Those initiatives could encounter significant pushback by Republicans in Congress, and it’s uncertain what the Biden administration can actually achieve. But much can be done by executive order, and with Democrats currently in control of both congressional chambers, the solar industry expects many aggressive, favorable federal policies going forward.
Bipartisan support does exist for some key initiatives, such as research and development of non-carbon technologies, and at least some tax incentives to deploy more renewables across the country.
In December, before former President Donald Trump left office, bipartisan congressional majorities approved a twoyear extension of existing tax incentives for solar and wind development. And now, Biden is seeking to extend that out to 2030.
Jim DesJardins, executive director of New Mexico’s Renewable Energy Industry Association, said the evolving