By Vahan Garboushian, Founder, CTO & Board of Directors Chairman

As the solar industry continues to mature, market watchers no longer doubt the long-term success of solar energy. But as the market evolves, we need to make sure we evolve with it. Below are three ideas that the solar industry needs to be thinking about.

We don’t need to rely on subsidies
Governments around the world are subsidizing solar power development to establish the renewable energy industry. We shouldn’t expect governments to keep supporting it forever. Instead, the industry should develop objective productivity standards that consumers and policy makers can use to weigh solar’s environmental and economic benefits against its costs. Such standards will affect energy policy development in solar’s favor.

Technology maturity = higher performance, lower production costs
Solar module performance has steadily improved over the last several years and will continue to progress for the foreseeable future. Continuous advancements to system components, efficiency gains, optical improvements and reduction of overall power losses will continue to increase performance. In addition to performance upgrades, controlling manufacturing costs will allow solar to be cost-comparable to traditional forms of energy generation. As the solar component supply chain matures, manufacturing processes become more efficient and volume-scaling cost savings will occur.

Putting distribution models on their head
In contrast to traditional “central station” grid deployment models of energy generation, CPV solar power is successfully adopting an economic-friendly deployment model called Wholesale Distributed Generation (WDG). Based on networks of small power facilities feeding local distribution networks, WDG removes the complexity of permitting, financing, interconnection and more. The unofficial 50-megawatt (MW) ceiling on WDG facilities favors small solar facilities that can be built on already developed land with minimal disruption to local environments. The industry should form at least part of their product development strategies around WDG and similar de-centralized models.