In this episode of This Week in Solar, host Aaron Nichols talks with Sean Swentek, Vice President of Marketing at Omnidian, about one of the solar industry’s biggest blind spots.
They discuss why many solar companies fail to plan for long-term operations and maintenance (O&M), how that’s created a wave of stranded customers, and what needs to change across the industry to restore trust.
You can connect with Sean on LinkedIn here.
Listen to this episode here, or on:
* YouTube
* Spotify
Expect to learn:
* Why great installers shouldn’t race to the bottom on price (and what they should do instead).
* Why “set it and forget it” solar was a dangerous myth.
* How O&M costs can be built into every solar plan from day one.
Quotes from the episode:
“If everyone decides to just compete on price, it’s a race to the bottom, and everything goes out the window as far as quality.” — Sean Swentek
“Being able to communicate briefly and meaningfully with emotion is becoming a lost art in clean energy.” — Sean Swentek
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, once again, we’re going to be talking about service and maintenance for solar energy systems. Today’s guest is someone that I’ve followed and kind of orbited for a little while on LinkedIn, and I’m excited to finally be meeting him digitally face-to-face.Sean Swentek, would you like to introduce yourself, maybe give a high-level overview of Omnidian and explain what your role is at that company?
Sean Swentek:Yeah, Aaron, thanks for the nice intro. I’ve also been orbiting you on LinkedIn—really impressed with the content that you share there and the way that you position your company and your podcast in the industry. It’s just really informative, and I really love watching your videos and reading what you write on LinkedIn.So, grateful for you. Thank you.
I mean, this industry, the best part about it is the people. I think all of us kind of agree: being in renewables is such a blessing.I’ve come from big industries like healthcare and banking and things where you don’t get that. Everyone you interact with in renewables, at least for me in the five years I’ve been in this, has just been incredible. So I feel really blessed to be in this space.
My name is Sean Swentek. Well done on the pronunciation—it’s not as hard as it looks; it just reads as it is. I’m the Vice President of Marketing and manage branding and communications at Omnidian.
We’re a nearly 10-year-old startup—really a growth-phase company today—with a technology and services solution for solar and battery storage, and soon EV charging systems. We created a purpose-built technology solution called Resolve that ingests data agnostic of any provider or data source. We compile that into a single source of truth in a digital twin to accurately model expected performance of a system and the energy it will produce, track against that, and detect anomalies in production remotely.
We can differentiate between issues like snow and an inverter being out and understand their individual impact on a system. We can remotely diagnose and often help remediate those issues without rolling a truck—saving truck roll costs. And if a truck roll is necessary, we can advise exactly what to bring through our field service network that’s nationwide and now in Australia.
I run the marketing arm of Omnidian, so if we get too technical, I’ll probably have to pass. But I also take on the role of helping the organization understand where the industry’s going—policy headwinds, tailwinds, and shifts that might affect both residential and commercial operations. So I like to think I’ve got a good sense of the industry and where it’s headed, and I’m happy to talk about some of those burning topics today.
Aaron Nichols:Yeah, thank you so much for that introduction, and I’m glad someone’s handling that at another company. It was a surprise to me to realize I liked policy and was interested in it. The whole birth of This Week in Solar was just me putting together internal policy briefs—and then realizing we should share them publicly.
Sean Swentek:I love that. Well done.
Aaron Nichols:Thank you. Well, you mentioned before we spoke that we don’t often do a great job considering operations and maintenance (O&M) of a solar project from the outset. And I think, as you know and as Omnidian is seeing, there’s going to be a crisis of solar service.
We get calls all the time from people who had a less-than-savory company install a solar system on their roof, promise a 25-year service plan, and then vanish. They don’t know what to do.So I’m interested in how we got here. Why don’t we do a great job considering operations and maintenance?
Sean Swentek:It’s a great question—and it’s not just a lack of considering O&M, it’s the lack of accounting for the cost of O&M over time.
On the residential side, which was the reason Omnidian was founded, many early systems weren’t meeting the promises made—especially from fast-scaling companies focused on sales, not long-term care. Homeowners didn’t usually bear O&M costs directly; they were handled through warranties or by the system owner in a lease.
But homeowners were rarely educated that solar systems, like homes or cars, need ongoing care. We need to normalize that expectation.
Aaron Nichols:Even just understanding that it might have issues. It’s a big electronic appliance. When you buy a washing machine or fridge, you know it might break. But with solar, people are blindsided when something goes wrong.
Sean Swentek:Exactly. And then there’s the lease model. Financing providers deploy systems across thousands of rooftops—they’re on the hook for performance. They plan for O&M at scale, but sometimes choose installers based on price and output promises.
That’s where we see over-promising on production and underestimating long-term costs. On the commercial side, the stakes are even higher—millions of dollars per system. If developers overmodel production, they’ll never hit those numbers in reality, and O&M budgets become an afterthought.
We need honesty across the industry—accurate modeling, real degradation rates, realistic inverter lifespans. Overpromising hurts everyone, including investors who lose trust in the sector.
Aaron Nichols:Of course. And I think there’s a human psychology factor too—25 years is hard to grasp. That’s nearly 10,000 days, almost a third of a lifetime.
Sean Swentek:Did you just do that math in your head? That was impressive.
Aaron Nichols:Thank you! I’ll get roasted if I’m wrong, though. But seriously—people can’t visualize that span of time. So they go for the cheapest quote and don’t realize they’re buying long-term headaches.
As a local company, we’re competitive, but not always the cheapest—and we have that conversation constantly. We fix systems all the time that were installed poorly by bargain providers.
What’s something people fail to take into account when modeling performance—something that comes back to bite them 10 or 20 years down the road?
Sean Swentek:First off—kudos to you and Exact Solar for standing by quality. Competing only on price is a race to the bottom.
As for modeling mistakes: expected component lifespan is a big one. Inverters rated for 15–25 years often fail earlier. Warranties help, but not if your installer or the manufacturer disappears.
The “solar coaster” is real—companies rise and fall fast. That’s why homeowners should prioritize proven components, rigorous installer vetting, and workmanship warranties.
Another overlooked factor is home turnover. Homes change owners more often than people think—sometimes six times during a system’s life. Lease transfers can be complicated and disrupt sales.
Overall, the industry has matured tremendously. Quality installations are more common, and companies like yours—and ours—are ensuring systems perform as promised. With rising utility rates, locking in a stable cost through solar still makes tremendous sense.
Aaron Nichols:We like to say you’re just prepaying for 25 years of power—smart shoppers buy in bulk.And interestingly, when we follow up years later, no one talks about ROI anymore. They just say, “I keep seeing bills go up—and it doesn’t affect me.”
Sean Swentek:I love that. The payback period conversation has always been there—three to seven years typically—but as battery storage grows, the economics improve again. And you’re right: utility power has infinite payback—it never ends or innovates.
Aaron Nichols:Exactly. Now, for local installers who care about quality, how can we model more accurately and deliver on promises using real-world data?
Sean Swentek:Great question. We actually published a public white paper years ago analyzing module and inverter failure rates and degradation compared to manufacturer claims. It’s eye-opening.
For our clients, we anonymize and share data-driven insights—like which components degrade slower, or which combinations yield better long-term performance. It helps them make database decisions that protect financial returns.
These systems are both clean energy solutions and financial assets. Using our data, clients can better manage those investments and forecast their performance more accurately.
Aaron Nichols:Usually when I hear “white paper,” I feel a yawn coming—but that actually sounds useful.
Sean Swentek:I know! It’s pretty wonky, but our data science team lives for it. Sometimes I need their help interpreting it myself.
Aaron Nichols:Yeah, you and I are both nerd whisperers in this industry.
Sean Swentek:I love that. I’m stealing it—nerd whisperer. It’s perfect.This industry is full of brilliant technical minds who just need translators to help the public understand their work.
Aaron Nichols:Exactly. And that’s my mission—to bring emotion and storytelling back into clean energy communication. Data’s important, but people connect with stories.
Sean Swentek:Totally. I’m a huge AI proponent, but don’t let AI replace your human voice. Storytelling builds trust. When I see a clearly AI-written post full of buzzwords and emojis, I just scroll past.
Communicating meaningful ideas succinctly and emotionally is a dying art—and storytellers like you are keeping it alive.
Aaron Nichols:Thanks, man. So, to wrap up—I ask every guest the same closing question.My grandma just turned 80. She was born in a world that had just electrified rural America and had no renewable energy. Everything we now take for granted—solar PV, grid interconnection, cost parity—has happened within her lifetime.
So: what do you think clean energy looks like 80 years from now?
Sean Swentek:Love this question. I didn’t prepare, because I wanted to answer creatively.
I always go back to that giant flaming ball in the sky—the sun. It already powers life; it could easily power the planet if we harness it creatively.
I’m fascinated by space-based solar—putting arrays in orbit that beam energy back to Earth. It could eliminate land-use issues and supply limitless clean power. Imagine the O&M challenges—astronaut electricians swapping out inverters in zero gravity!
I also think geothermal will play a major role—tapping the Earth’s core carefully, without destruction, for heating and cooling. Between solar in the sky and heat in the ground, everything we need is already here. We just have to use it wisely.
Aaron Nichols:I love that. One of our sales guys said something similar: “The sun already powers life—we just figured out how to harness it.”
Sean Swentek:That’s beautiful. I’m stealing that too. A nerd whisperer who believes the sun already powers life—we just have to capture it better.
Aaron Nichols:Well, thank you so much for joining today, Sean. Where can people find you?
Sean Swentek:I’m very findable on LinkedIn—I love connecting and having real conversations. My email and phone number are public there because I want to talk to people who care about this work. And if you want to learn about Omnidian, go to omnidian.com.
Aaron Nichols:Amazing. And if you want my phone number—good luck! Talk to Sean.
Thank you, everyone. That’s been This Week in Solar. We’ll talk to you next week.
