In today’s episode, Aaron sits down with Meghan Stimmler of Solar Hut.
Meghan shares her journey from:
* Sweeping floors at her dad’s solar company
* Being dragged “kicking and screaming” into sales
* Becoming a veteran solar consultant and board member at the California Solar & Storage Association (CalSA), and actively shaping solar policy in California.
Listen to this episode on:
* YouTube
* Spotify
Connect with Meghan on LinkedIn here.
Together, Aaron and Meghan dig into:
* How California regulators have repeatedly tried to strip solar contractors of the right to install batteries, and how CalSA has fought back.
* Why PG&E customers are now seeing ~47¢/kWh rates (three times higher than the national average!).
* Why renters are stuck with $1,000+ electric bills and almost no options (why portable and modular solar needs to be part of the future).
EpisodeQuotes:
“You can’t reduce your costs even though you’re reducing your usage. The bill just keeps going up.” — Meghan Stimmler
“Every rental, every apartment complex should have carports with solar all over the roof. It’s not going to erase every bill, but it really does help.” — Meghan Stimmler
Transcript:
Aaron Nichols:Hello everyone and welcome back to This Week in Solar. I’m your host Aaron Nichols, the Research and Policy Specialist here at Exact Solar in Newtown, Pennsylvania.And today we have someone who’s been fighting for solar and selling solar for much longer than I’ve been in the industry.And she’s been in one of the battleground markets in California, which I’m excited to hear about, because I know nothing about selling solar in California.So, Megan Stimler, would you introduce yourself and talk about what you do at Solar Hut and what your role is?
Meghan Stimmler:Yeah, absolutely. So, I’m Megan Stimler. I’m with Solar Hut out of El Dorado County in California. We’ve been in business since 2008.We’ve been installing batteries since 2009 and I started here in 2012 as an intern. My father actually started Solar Hut.
He worked for one of the oldest solar companies in Sacramento called Akina Solar and then branched off and started his own business, and so when I was in college I had to work or I had to do an internship for an energy or environmental company.So went to work for my dad and his solar company.
So that’s how I started—sweeping floors, you know, doing copier stuff. And then I became the receptionist, then I started doing permits, PG&E paperwork, interconnection.And then I was tossed into sales, even though I didn’t want to do it because I was a bartender for like 10 years and I was like, no, I’m done with the people.
So I started doing sales and I think in April will be 10 years in sales. So I’ve been in a little part of every part of this company besides actually installing on the roof.
Aaron Nichols:Sometimes the best leaders and the best salespeople are the ones who are just dragged into it kicking and screaming.
Meghan Stimmler:That’s exactly me. I did not want to deal with people again and talk with people, but I’m just like my dad.I have a niche for talking to people.
Aaron Nichols:Nice. Yeah. I was a bartender for a long time too. I had a great time with that.
Yeah. Well, you mentioned when we were talking before the episode that you’ve been fighting for solar contractors’ rights for a long time.So when did that start and what—2015 or… yeah, 2015? And what is CalSA for anyone who doesn’t know—California Solar and Storage Association?
Meghan Stimmler:Okay. Back in 2015 the Contractor State License Board were trying to remove a solar contractor C-46’s rights to install batteries in California.They were saying that it was unsafe and we did not have the knowledge or expertise to install batteries.
And we’ve been, you know, since back long before that—80% of all batteries in California have been installed by a C-46 solar contractor without incidences.So that is where the fighting did begin—attending those meetings with the CSLB, the California State Licensing Board.
And then we won back in 2015 and then they came back in about 2019 again, trying to remove our rights of installing batteries and restricting it.They wanted us to just do PV solar and thermal solar, pool solar.
And so I got started heavily involved with CalSA and actually speaking at the CSLB meetings against why we are entitled and our expertise and how we are doing it safe and efficiently.The biggest thing for me was we would actually have to teach the electrical contractors how to install batteries, so it doesn’t make much sense to me why they’re trying to remove it.
We are now in litigation with, I think it’s litigation with CSLB, and we are starting to get majority of what we are fighting for for the last 10 years—install batteries up to a certain kilowatt, install it with existing solar systems, you know.
But that’s, you know, if you want to really go into it, I’ve been working—I’m on the board for CalSA, so now I’m on the subcommittee for C-46 contractors and the fight to install batteries.
Aaron Nichols:And back then, I mean, was it mostly flooded lead-acid batteries? Were you still even installing lithium batteries? Like, I’m sure the technology has changed a ton.
Meghan Stimmler:Yeah. Back then it was the lead-acid—Magnum was a big one we did.I think, you know, Tesla Powerwalls didn’t really come available… that was probably around 2016.
But we were doing the lead-acid off-grid. I live in a really rural community and so lead-acid was a big thing up here for many years, but you almost need to—as the homeowner—know how to maintain those batteries.So it’s nothing that we really suggest for the average homeowner, but now with Powerwalls, it’s, you know, plug-and-play, you don’t have to worry about anything.
Aaron Nichols:Yeah, I came into this solar industry when flooded lead-acid was basically on its way out, but I heard that, you know, homeowners had to periodically pour distilled water into them to maintain them.
Meghan Stimmler:Yeah, we had battery sheds and battery rooms and all that fun stuff.It wasn’t a common thing, but it was definitely people who were very rural that lost power—you know, we had one customer who, they lost power twice or 12 times a month on the regular.
And they had kids who were dependent on electricity for medical issues. So they didn’t really want to always rely on a generator because that was very expensive, so we did batteries for them.But those are the type of clients we really worked with back in the olden days of solar.
And now it’s more for grid reliability and grid optimization.
Aaron Nichols:Yeah, and I’m sure for someone like that, especially in a rural community that’s losing power, the work you guys do is so important.
And obviously, I think if you take the ability to install those batteries out of the hands of solar installers, then I’m sure it gets much more expensive, doesn’t it?
Meghan Stimmler:Absolutely. Especially with the laws in California and being an electrician—you have to be an electrician, you have to have apprentices, all the insurances—it is a lot.There is a lot of expense that goes in there. And at the end of the day, you don’t really want to hire the cheapest electrician.
Aaron Nichols:Right. So yeah, there are certain things that you just don’t go budget on.My friend was joking about that, like, I don’t think you should buy used climbing ropes on Facebook Marketplace.
Meghan Stimmler:Probably not. Probably not a great idea.Yeah, when you’re talking about something that you want to last for decades on your home, you definitely don’t want to go bargain-basement.
No, and so I always see—like I said, I see these batteries on Marketplace and I just saw Magnum the other day and I’m like, how old are those, and did you maintain them, and you’re selling them for, I think it was like 16 grand and I’m like, wow.Yeah, it was ridiculous and I’m like, someone will probably buy those, thinking they’re getting some crazy deal.
Aaron Nichols:Yeah. And they’ll plug it in and they’ll have 10 minutes of backup.
Meghan Stimmler:Wonderful. Yes, exactly. I mean, a lot of these old batteries, since we’ve come in and converted them with newer-age batteries…Most of the time with those ones that are very rural or almost off-grid, we usually do Franklins for those with a generator backup.
But, you know, we’ve had our hand in every type of battery kind of around here—LG Chem, SolarEdge, Tesla, Franklin, Enphase.So we really do a lot of research into the actual battery manufacturers—what can they run—because a lot of people up here have wells and so we can’t just sell anything that’s not going to have that well run.
So it’s really made the list of what we prefer to sell small.
Aaron Nichols:Yeah, I think if you talk to most contractors who have been in business for a long time in this industry, they’re going to have some preferred vendors.
Meghan Stimmler:Yes. Our president is very just like, no new stuff until it’s been very, very proven by other people. Yes. Yeah.
I—my house is usually a test site for a lot of manufacturers in PG&E territory. So, you know, I allow it, but it becomes… I think we’ve had a test site for racking.I’m like, okay, let’s do it. Let’s figure it out. We were one of the first Franklin batteries for PG&E territory—it took me, I think, 120 days to get PTO.
So yeah, nothing I would put a regular customer through, but yeah, we usually take somebody around here and usually my house is the fun site.
Aaron Nichols:Yeah. Well, I’m pretty amazed because, I mean, you’ve been in this industry six times longer than I have. I’ve only been here about two years, you’ve been here about 13, it sounds like.
Meghan Stimmler:Yes, 13.
Aaron Nichols:And I’ve, you know, been here for a period of tremendous change and upheaval, but you’ve been here six times longer than me.So what are some of the major changes you’ve seen since you started here?
Meghan Stimmler:I mean, the first one was PG&E going from NEM-1, which NEM-1 was the NEM interconnection for 30 years.And then we went to NEM-2. It wasn’t a drastic change. A lot of people were a little upset by it but it wasn’t some drastic change.
It was a connection fee payment and then they did have a cap of what they were going to be paying you on a retail value for your solar system.
The second one after that—I’m trying to get them all in order in my head—I mean between all that time we had the changes in CSLB and the fight to keep, you know, solar…
Aaron Nichols:What is CSLB?
Meghan Stimmler:California State Licensing Board. Those are the people who were trying to change the C-46 solar contractor’s ability to install batteries, and that might have started in 2015-ish as well.
And we lost NEM-1 in 2015. I remember doing like Saturday interconnection paperwork for that one.
And then we went from NEM-2 to NEM-3. That was a mad dash trying to get all of the interconnection paperwork submitted in a timely manner.I took a lovely week break after that.
Because it was— the systems didn’t have to be installed but we had to submit all the paperwork and the paperwork couldn’t be wrong, otherwise your contract could be voided and those homeowners would be pretty upset.
NEM-3 was transitioning from retail value to wholesale value of over-production of the solar system.And then they also put a cap—a 150% cap—on what you were allowed to install based on your historical data.
So that was in 2023. So two years ago… will be, yeah, it’ll be three years in April. And now we’re in the mad dash for the federal tax credit.
So there’s all that. We also, you know, between that we’ve had COVID. That was kind of intense in California.They couldn’t tell you for the first three weeks if solar was a… if you were allowed to install solar—if it was an essential service or not.
Exactly—essential service. So we were on pause for about three weeks.And then during that timeframe, we started doing a lot of SGIP—Self-Generation Incentive Program—which helped people who were in those really rural areas, who had a lot of public-safety shut-offs or wildfires, with incentives to install batteries at their house.
So that became a big part of us. That program ends as well on December 31st.So that’s very sad because I think in the last 24 months, we’ve had about $500,000 worth of incentives for homeowners.
It’s not just your address. You also either have a medical rate with PG&E or you had the low income with a well.So we’ve gotten about $500,000 for homeowners in the last 24 months, which is great for those types of people. That program does end though, so very sad.
And then, you know, we’re starting on conversations of, you know, the next NEM. So that’s a little precede—a little break—on all these stops.
So it’s always a fight trying to install systems easy. My crew always jokes around how we miss the simple solar installations, and now they’re not.
Aaron Nichols:Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you mentioned as well before we recorded this that you just think it’s unfair that solar has to jump through so many more hoops than most other industries.
Meghan Stimmler:Correct. Yeah, I’m all for having things environmentally safe and making sure that we are installing a safe product, but the amount of hoops…Like, you know, just like the C-46 contractor—they have the real record of incidents of a residential battery installed incorrectly and causing harm to homeowners or the house or anything like that.
It’s a very safe product that we are installing. So for them to come and fight and remove our abilities to do that is unfair, especially without cause.
So there’s that fight and then, you know, the fight for the homeowners to save money.I mean, I’m not sure how much your utility rates are there, but here we’re an average of 47 cents—
Aaron Nichols:A kilowatt-hour?
Meghan Stimmler:A kilowatt.
Aaron Nichols:Oh my gosh, that’s crazy. We’re less than half that.So that means an average person is paying more than a thousand dollars a month for electricity.
Meghan Stimmler:Yeah, exactly. So I have an electric house. I have a pool. I’ve got three kids. I’ve had an EV for about… the last two and a half years now.I’ve had my EV for about three and a half years now. My husband just bought one back in June, and if we did not have solar, my summer bill would be $1500 a month.
Wow. I don’t even want to afford that. And that, you know, that’s what California has wanted you to do. They want to go all-electric.They want you to buy the EVs, you know, and then they’re going to now punish you for doing that.
They’re removing incentives. They’re removing the federal tax credit.They like to tell us that we’re the reason why, you know, the rates are going up so high is because of this curve that doesn’t exist.
You know, if you look at CAISO, which is the California Independent System Operator—they’re the ones who control the grid—and if you look at what solar is actually doing for the grid and what batteries are doing for the grid,we’re saving so much money for Californians in general just by going solar. But we’re the bad guys.
So it’s very disheartening because like I said, you know, I’ve been a homeowner for 12 years and 12 years ago my bills were 150% cheaper.That is how much my rates have increased.
Aaron Nichols:So when you say, I mean, 150%, that means your average would have been what?
Meghan Stimmler:My average was probably about like $250–$300.
Aaron Nichols:Wow. And so, you know, there’s so many other people who are like you. You’re just an average homeowner—not some crazy mansion. You have a regular house in a regular neighborhood.
Electricity bills here just went up by 22% in our service area, and so that’s just what we’ve been hitting people with in terms of messaging: just opt out of this madness.You’re never—you have no control over this. It’s just going to cost more every year. It’s always going to be the same product.
And solar lets you exit this hamster wheel.
Meghan Stimmler:Absolutely. I have homeowners who tell me, like, “I have upgraded my HVAC. I’ve redone my insulation.I’ve, you know, stopped using my air conditioner as much. I stopped using my heater as much. I stopped doing this, this and that.”
And they go, “My bills are still rising.” And it’s, you know, you can’t reduce your costs even though you’re reducing your usage.It just keeps going up.
Aaron Nichols:Yeah, that’s one of the things that I thought was so powerful when I caught up with one of our homeowners whose system has now been operating for a decade.We just talked about what it’s like and he said, you know, “Price increases used to piss me off. Now I don’t even think about them. My wife is too hot, I just crank up the AC. It doesn’t matter.”
Meghan Stimmler:Yes, exactly. And that’s fine with me too, because I’ll, you know, sometimes it’s just a hot day.We get up to sometimes upwards of 110 out here. So I’m like, it’s too hot. I need to turn that down a few degrees.
And it’s fine. I mean, if at the end of the year my bill is just $10 more because of those few days, like, really, I’m going to pay that.But overall, I think we’re—you know, I am an energy hog, but I do try to conserve in some aspects, but I also have a huge solar system. I’ve got three batteries, so I do what I can.
And it’s great for the environment, but it’s also great for my pocketbook.
Aaron Nichols:Yeah, absolutely. Well, you also mentioned that it’s important to you to protect the more than two million solar energy systems that y’all have out there in California.Why did you use that word “protect”?
Meghan Stimmler:Yeah, so because of all of the changes in California—from NEM-2 to NEM-3—we lost over 17,000 solar jobs in the state of California.A lot of those companies’ customers are now orphaned.
So we’re having to go in—I mean, I just dealt with a phone call yesterday where he called as a past customer.He just bought a new home. The system installed was by a company who’s no longer in business, so he calls me panicking like, “What do I do? If there’s an issue what do I do? This company is no longer in business.”
And I go, “That’s no worries. You just, you know, you have to call the manufacturers and get it transferred to my company so if there are issues we can take care of you.”But a lot of people don’t have that sense. They just think that, you know, the system’s up there and now they just have to deal with it.
And when you don’t have monitoring, you have no idea what’s going on. You don’t really know who to call.So luckily, you know, we do have some homeowners out there who try to figure these things out on their own.
But there’s a lot of people like that where they just are orphaned—they’re left to figure it out themselves.And you shouldn’t have to. You’re talking about electricity. You shouldn’t go messing around with electricity on your roof.
Aaron Nichols:Exactly.
Meghan Stimmler:Usually they don’t go mess with it, but they don’t know what is going on with their solar system.There’s no real conversations with them about what is on their roof.
And it might be just a lack of education to real estate agents or the new homeowners.But there’s very little conversation about, you know, “Here’s what you have on your roof.”
It’s kind of like someone buying a car and then being like, “Well, it drives from A to B.” Sometimes you don’t, you know, and so that’s what these homeowners are experiencing.They don’t know the solar system. They don’t know about the warranties.
They don’t know about the manufacturers. They don’t know what it should be producing unless someone is there to help guide their hand and say, “Okay, you need to call this person. You need to press this button. You need to connect this and that.”
And a lot of people don’t have that. They’re just hoping that their PG&E bills just stay low.And I don’t even know if anybody knows how many orphan systems are out there.
17,000 jobs is a lot. And so how many homes were installed by the 17,000 workers?
So we do take care of a lot of companies that have been in and out of the industry over the last, you know, 15 years.And we’ve got a really good repair crew with my team that takes care of a lot of these orphan systems.
But sometimes, you know, you just don’t—you don’t know. The homeowner doesn’t know.I’m in the industry, so I have a, you know, jaded perspective, like, “Oh yeah, you just call this person.” But, you know, not a lot of people do that.
Aaron Nichols:Oh, it’s not always that easy. Totally.
Well, to bring us home here, Megan, I ask the same question to everyone that I interview on this show, and it has to do with the fact that a couple of months ago, I went to my grandma’s 80th birthday party.And as I was sitting there thinking about what 80 years means, that means that she was born into a world without renewable energy.
We didn’t even make the first PV cell until 1954. So for most of her life, the only way we knew how to create electricity was to dig things up and burn them.And throughout that time, I mean, Jimmy Carter put panels on the White House, the new millennium rolled around, the prices of solar just absolutely dropped, and now it’s the cheapest, fastest form of energy.
So all of that has happened in her life. I’m curious, if you’re just going to moonshot, what do you think clean energy looks like 80 years from now?
Meghan Stimmler:I hope that we make the panels—in the last 10 years they have gotten larger. I want a reduction of it,so we can fit more kilowatt-hours into that little silicon wafer and fit more in the roofline.
Like for me, I’m stuck. My roof is maxed out and I still have a true-up at the end of the year, you know.And keep going with safer, cleaner battery technologies and make it more available to everybody.
You know, and portable—people who rent. That’s the number one complaint I get is, “I’m renting my house.Landlords don’t want to go solar, and my bills are $1,000, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
So portable renewable energies would be amazing, because you can just take it to the next house.
Aaron Nichols:Yeah. And I mean, if anyone is in that situation—obviously, this is just a band-aid for that problem—but you can just buy, like, get on Facebook Marketplace, find a used panel, find an EcoFlow battery bank.And, you know, you’ll spend less than what you spend on power in a month and you can charge all your devices on it.
Meghan Stimmler:Yeah, it’s a band-aid, but, you know, we need more than the band-aid for all these renters.And, you know, I know in Europe they’re starting to do solar on patios and formulas that are just collapsible and you can take them with you.
Something that, you know, it’s kind of like—I’m probably one of the few, but I think every rental, every apartment complex,they need to have carports with solar all over the roof to make those bills lower.
I’m not going to say it’s going to completely eliminate all of your bills, but, you know, it really does help.In California, every home has to be built with solar.
Aaron Nichols:Yeah. I’m huge on carports. I mean, yeah, unfortunately, they’re difficult to finance if anyone is listening and wondering why we don’t have more of them.
But we just—we have, I think, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of square miles of parking lots in this country because we’re so obsessed with our cars, and they’re already ugly and pointless,and putting solar over them makes them so much better.
Meghan Stimmler:Oh yeah. All the school districts around me are building giant parking lots full of solar and I talked to the superintendents there a few years ago about it.My company is too small to do the vast giant rows that they were doing and it was right during NEM-3 and I’m like, I’m not taking this on.
But they just now—we’re almost three years in—and they’re just now finishing, I think, the seventh school out of like 15.So it’s great. It’s going to save them—I mean, I was looking at it—it’s going to save them like a billion dollars.
And those billion dollars are going to go back into the kids over the, you know, 25 years of their PPA.There’s a lot more money that we can be spending, you know, towards the kids, towards healthcare versus electricity.
Something that is an essential now is we have to—I don’t know anybody who doesn’t use a light bulb.
Aaron Nichols:Yeah. Well, Megan, thank you for coming on today.
If people want to find you, and if you want to be found, where can you be found?
Meghan Stimmler:So you can find me on LinkedIn. My name is Megan Stimmler, S-T-I-M-M-L-E-R.Solarhut.org—that’s my company’s website. You can find me on there too.
Any of the CalSA meetings—California Solar and Storage Association—I’m a board member for them and I’m always at all their events.But thank you so much for having me today. It was great talking to you.
Aaron Nichols:Yeah, thank you so much for coming on, Megan. And for anyone listening—that’s been This Week in Solar, and I will talk to you next week.
