One of the things that’s strangest to me about social media like TikTok and Instagram is when people record themselves doing things that are . . . a little sketchy . . . and then share those videos with the world. I wrote about some of these people for my latest story, which is an inside look at solar sales bros and the chaos they cause.
How Solar Sales Bros Threaten the Green Energy Transition
I came across this story while I was writing my last story, Rooftop Solar Has a Dark Side, about my own personal experience with leased solar panels that didn’t work. A lot of homeowners ended up with bad solar on their roof, I found, because they’d been lied to by door-to-door salesmen who told them they’d completely eliminate their power bill with solar panels, something that was not true. There have been lawsuits for years now alleging that door-to-door salesmen stretch the truth when selling solar panels, and no one has done much about it.
What’s changing now is that there are lots of guys on Instagram and TikTok who are actually teaching people how to become one of these sketchy door-to-door salesmen. They brag about their wealth on social media, tell people they can make $7,000 in 15 minutes, and show them how to do it. That usually entails stretching the truth, telling people the government will give them free solar panels, or otherwise badgering homeowners until they say yes. They tend to focus on lower-income or older homeowners. Just go on TikTok or Instagram and search for Solar Sales and you’ll see some of them — it’s so lucrative that even the Wolf of Wall Street, who served 22 months in prison for financial fraud, is doing it.
Complaints to the FTC are climbing much faster than the speed at which solar is actually being deployed.
I talked to one guy who made $350k selling solar panels in one year—but he says 90% of what he told people was a lie. You can read more in my story, but it’s interesting to me how little regulators seem to be doing about this, while it has the potential to put a very bad taste in people’s mouths re: solar. Surely there’s a way to ensure people get solar systems for a reasonable price that will offset their power usage without relying on slick talking door-to-door salesmen?
One thing that stuck with me was this text, received by someone trying to sell solar legitimately. I think it really illustrates the bro culture that has pervaded solar sales.
(If you like this story, it reminded me of one I did at The Atlantic about similar sales bros selling the trick to getting rich on Amazon. It, too, did not go well for clients.) I also wrote, for TIME, about why Maine didn’t vote to replace its investor-owned utility company, even though it’s widely hated. Why It’s So Hard to Break Up With Your Utility One thing to note is that the solar sales bros castigate utilities in their pitch, making them seem like the bad guy who is going to take all your hard-earned cash, while the picture is a little more nuanced than that.
Books To Fall Asleep To (BFAT)
I have been listening to One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World, a poorly titled but fascinating book about a Jewish woman who was born into the Juderia, the closely-knit Jewish community in Rhodes. She grew up there until she was deported to Auschwitz, though almost all of her family was murdered there, she survived and eventually settled in NYC. I didn’t know anything about the thriving Jewish community on Rhodes — many of them spoke Italian, among many other languages, because Rhodes was seized from the Ottoman Empire by the Italians — but am somewhat familiar with Rhodes because I lived in Greece after college and know it as a beautiful place with a really interesting history. Levi’s life is fascinating, as are the descriptions of life on Rhodes. One of my favorite lines is from her grandmother, who was something of a healer on the island, and would show up at sick people’s houses shouting, “Bring me a fistful of salt!” And now I have the title of my autobiography.