Pundits love to make predictions.
They also love to never come back later and see whether those predictions were brilliant… or quietly compostable.
So here we are, doing the rare thing: pulling up our December 2024 “12 Days of Solar Christmas” predictions and grading them honestly because 2025 didn’t just deliver a few lessons, it delivered a policy earthquake wrapped in a bow: the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB).
And for residential solar, OBBB wasn’t a “headwind.” It was a calendar deadline with teeth.
As we wrote in our OBBB FAQ: Section 25D ends for systems installed after December 31, 2025. No phase-down, no gentle step-down, just gone in 2026.
That single change is setting up what many expect to be a seismic shift in 2026: a pull-forward rush in 2025… followed by a contraction next year. Forecasts vary, but even conservative outlooks point to a meaningful drop. For example, Ohm Analytics projects ~25% fewer residential installs in 2026 vs 2025. And Roth Capital warns the loan segment could see contraction “potentially around 50%” as 25D expires.
Installers feel it. From our conversations, most are nervous. Some are making big moves. Others are still trying to figure out what “post-25D residential solar” even looks like.
The one saving grace: electricity rates keep rising, which helps the pure economics of solar stand on their own more than they used to. (Not the same as replacing a 30% credit but it matters.)
Now let’s unwrap the scorecard.
And threading through everything: OBBB turned operational excellence into a survival trait because in 2025, “installed by 12/31” isn’t a slogan. It’s a tax outcome.
On the 1st day of Christmas… 🎁
A Really Modern Solar Customer
Verdict: Right, and 2025 proved the “home energy stack” is real.
We said homeowners aren’t just shopping for panels; they’re shopping for a better home energy setup: lower bills, more control, and more resilience. In 2025, the data increasingly supports that customers want additional home energy products.
- On EnergySage, 73% of shoppers said they were interested in storage in H2 2024, and the national battery attachment rate hit 45% (an all-time high).
- And as EVs become part of the bundle, the IEA notes 85%+ of U.S. EV owners have access to home charging.
What changed in 2025: the homeowner’s decision became less “Is solar cool?” and more “Can I trust you to deliver this whole experience on time and support it afterward?”
That’s why customer experience stopped being “brand frosting” and became risk management. Savvy solar pros focused on bringing customer communications into one place and automating proactive updates through every stage so customers don’t spiral into anxiety (and cancellations).
On the 2nd day of Christmas… ⚡
Appreciation of Solar’s Contribution to Grid Resiliency
Verdict: Right trendline, and OBBB makes it even more important.
Resilience is no longer niche. It’s mainstream, emotional, and easy to understand:
“I want my house to work when the grid doesn’t.”
And in 2025, both consumers and utilities leaned harder into that mindset. Wood Mackenzie’s 2025 VPP research essentially confirmed that VPPs are “no longer experimental,” with deployments growing 33% year-over-year, a sign that utilities are increasingly procuring capacity from residential fleets (batteries, thermostats, EV charging) out of necessity to manage load.
Real-world events didn’t hurt the case. In January 2025, California wildfires drove outages that swelled to roughly 400,000 customers, and in December 2025, storms in the Pacific Northwest knocked out power to 580,000+ homes and businesses at the peak.
In a post-25D world, resilience (especially with storage) becomes one of the strongest “non-tax-credit” reasons to buy and a clear pathway to new value streams like grid services and VPPs.
But here’s the catch: resilience sells; resilience support retains.
That’s why the post-install experience (monitoring, alerts, support) matters so much. Installers are investing more in ongoing engagement to keep homeowners confident and reduce “silent failure” churn.
On the 3rd day of Christmas… 🧾
IRA Bonuses in Your Backyard
Verdict: 2025 reminded everyone that federal funding can be here today, frozen tomorrow.
We hoped IRA momentum would flow into local wins. REAP grants helping rural and agricultural customers fund on-site solar, and Solar for All scaling rooftop/community solar access for low-income households.
Then the new Trump administration hit pause. An early-2025 executive order triggered a broad review/freezing of IRA disbursements, and rural energy projects (including REAP-backed solar) got caught in the churn. And Solar for All? In August 2025, EPA announced it would stop implementing the $7B Solar for All program and move to rescind remaining funds/grants, citing loss of authority/funding after new legislation.
Residential takeaway: a big chunk of the “grant-fueled demand tailwind” we expected is now stalled or gone, which is why 2026 becomes less about incentive storytelling and more about selling on rising electricity rates + executing flawlessly on timelines and homeowner trust.
On the 4th day of Christmas… 🏭
Local PV & Storage Manufacturing
Verdict: The momentum was real but 2025 also became the year a lot of “future storage factories” quietly vanished.
In our original wish list, we imagined more domestic manufacturing for both PV and storage, and in some ways that happened. The U.S. did continue to add real solar manufacturing capacity. Reuters reported U.S. solar module manufacturing capacity reaching 55 GW in the first half of 2025.
But when it comes to storage manufacturing, 2025 also delivered a less festive subplot: a meaningful pullback in the project pipeline. Not just delays but cancellations. Key examples: LG Energy Solution paused construction on the dedicated ESS portion of its Queen Creek, Arizona complex. KORE Power shelving its planned battery cell plant in Buckeye, Arizona, and FREYR canceling its planned battery factory in Georgia.
The takeaway for residential solar heading into 2026: even if demand for storage stays strong, the supply-chain “domestic ramp” isn’t guaranteed. Installers win by controlling what they can control: timelines, expectations, and homeowner communication.
Which leads to…
On the 5th day of Christmas… 🏋️
A Crossfit Guide to Running a Solar Business
Verdict: Tragically correct.
If you run a residential solar business, you didn’t just need grit in 2025, you needed range:
- policy literacy
- financing literacy
- operational discipline
- customer success muscle
- reputation management
- service readiness (because orphaned systems don’t service themselves)
OBBB added a new workout: deadline operations.
As our “5 steps” post put it, the bill didn’t just change economics, it compressed timelines and made the “booked backlog” feel like a ticking clock.
This is one reason we keep hammering what sounds simple but is brutally important in practice: set expectations early and keep customers updated so your team can handle more projects without drowning in escalations.
On the 6th day of Christmas… 🔁
Easy Repeat Sales
Verdict: Right… but “easy” is not the word.
One tweak we’d add after watching 2025 play out: the strongest installers pivoted hard to their existing customer base. As new system sales slowed, “recapturing market share” often meant upgrades especially retrofitting batteries onto homes that already had solar. (The explosion in “add-on” sales is the tell.)
Sunrun explicitly rebranded itself as a “storage-first company” and reported a 70% storage attachment rate and ended Q3 with 941,701 subscribers, which becomes a massive built-in audience for more upgrades over time.
In 2026, repeat sales won’t be a growth hack. They’ll be a stabilizer:
- batteries and add-ons
- EV chargers
- HVAC
- service plans
The installers who thrive will treat the install as the start of the relationship, not the end. That’s why building trust during the install is so important in a down market. Organic growth is cheaper than paid growth when CAC is under pressure.
On the 7th day of Christmas… 📣
A New Narrative for Solar
Verdict: We were early. The narrative is still being rebuilt under pressure.
We wanted 2025 to be the year the industry would move past the “scam / bad PR” narrative toward one of integrity and a hospitality-level experience. Unfortunately, the industry is still fighting the “scam” label made worse by the high-profile collapse/exit of SunPower and Sunnova.
Even as “Grade A” equipment and more professional operators are being highlighted to rebuild trust, the dominant consumer narrative in late 2025 was often policy confusion and urgency especially the OBBB-driven message of “get solar installed before 25D ends.”
So what now? 2025 was about the deadline. In 2026, we’ll need a narrative that still brings customers to the table, less “bill of rights theater,” more clear promises + consistent delivery, like the “promise-to-customers playbook”
On the 8th day of Christmas… 🛂
A Passport to the Electric Grid
Verdict: Still coming, state-by-state, program-by-program.
We predicted that customers will engage with the grid via VPPs, choosing to rent, share, or own their resources. And in some ways we were right. Wood Mackenzie reports North American VPP capacity reached 37.5 GW in 2025, and the market is broadening: 25+ organizations are now procuring 100+ MW of VPP capacity each, evidence that the “homeowner as grid participant” is now mainstream. That said, grid participation is still messy and uneven. pv magazine USA warns OBBB/25D dynamics could create “holes in the market,” especially in states where third-party ownership (TPO) isn’t enabled and the post-2025 economics tighten.
Installer watch-outs for 2026: stay current on active VPP programs and those in development in your territories (utility pilots, aggregator offerings, co-op programs), and proactively message how solar+storage can earn/offset value through grid services, not just backup power. If you don’t know the programs, you’ll undersell the battery.
On the 9th day of Christmas… 🧱
A BonaFide Solar Company
Verdict: Miss, but this is the entire 2026 storyline.
We predicted a new, ethical “iconic” solar brand would emerge to fill the void left by the bankrupt giants. That didn’t happen in 2025. No single “white knight” stepped forward; if anything, the market fragmented further as more big names faltered. SunPower’s 2024 bankruptcy still hung over the category, and 2025 brought fresh shockwaves like Sunnova’s Chapter 11 and PosiGen’s Chapter 11.
But OBBB made the need for a “bonafide” company real. In a down market, the winners won’t be the loudest, they’ll be the most reliable: tight ops, disciplined marketing, diversified revenue, and service expansion. Some installers will adapt quickly. Some won’t. And experience becomes the differentiator, because the companies that reduce cancellations, prevent escalations, and keep projects moving will win share from those who can’t.
That’s how a true “white knight” eventually emerges, less by branding, more by consistent delivery and homeowner trust (the kind you build with clear promises and proactive communication, every step of the journey).
On the 10th day of Christmas… 🔌
A Big New Problem: Load Growth
Verdict: Spot on, and it’s the long-term tailwind residential needs.
We predicted AI data centers (plus electrification) would drive load growth fast enough that the grid would need more solar than people expected. In 2025, this stopped being an abstract forecast and became a headline. Analysts estimated data centers alone would need about 11.3 GW of additional utility-supplied power in 2025, basically a whole new chunk of demand showing up all at once.
And when demand ramps that quickly, prices don’t stay quiet. In PJM territory, the fallout from record capacity pricing is expected to show up as roughly 1.5%–5% higher electric bills starting June 2026 (depending on location).
That’s why this matters for 2026: even as 25D goes away, the “solar + storage = protection from rising rates” story gets stronger not weaker.
On the 11th day of Christmas… 🧑🔧
An Expanded & Empowered Workforce
Verdict: Right, and more urgent than we realized.
Our original prediction wasn’t just “we need more installers.” It was: we need a bigger, better-supported workforce that can bridge two worlds: the skilled, physical work of building projects and the day-to-day customer experience that determines whether homeowners trust the industry.
In 2025, we started to see AI show up in real installer work like instant quotes and designs to automated permit packages. However, in 2026, AI will be a core productivity lever. The hard parts of solar (permits, interconnection, roof/electrical work) still matter, but the mundane moments still decide outcomes: the calls, emails, texts, status updates, expectation-setting, and escalation prevention. That’s where AI needs to be integrated deeply into workflows, not sprinkled on top, so teams can scale their capacity without compromising trust like putting on glasses when your eyes are tired, but for the whole business.
Which brings us to Day 12.
On the 12th day of Christmas… 🤖🎄
Bodhi AI Assistant (and yes, we actually shipped it)
Verdict: Nailed it, and 2026 makes it even more valuable.
In our original 12 Days post, we wished for a world with an AI assistant that helps solar teams scale support without torching the customer experience.
In 2025, we delivered it.
Bodhi AI Assistant is the industry’s first always-on, first-line support agent built into the Bodhi platform, designed to reduce support load while keeping responses fast and empathetic. And in a world where OBBB creates a 2025 surge + 2026 contraction, this matters more than ever because:
- When teams are slammed, response time slips
- When response time slips, anxiety rises
- When anxiety rises, cancellations rise
- When cancellations rise, profitability evaporates
The bigger point isn’t “AI is cool.” It’s that the industry is heading into a year where doing the basics well—clear answers, consistent updates, fewer escalations—will separate the companies that hold trust from the ones that lose it.
Conclusion: the receipts are in (and 2026 is going to test the fundamentals)
So… how’d we do?
Honestly? Better than most prediction posts and worse than our egos would prefer. We called a lot of the directional shifts correctly (storage, VPPs, load growth, the “modern customer”), but we definitely underestimated how fast policy could change the tone of the entire market.
And that’s really the headline: 2025 became the deadline year. 2026 becomes the fundamentals year.
Without 25D, the companies that win won’t be the ones with the slickest pitch. They’ll be the ones who can:
- set clear expectations,
- hit timelines,
- keep homeowners informed without burning out their teams,
- and build enough trust that upgrades, referrals, and service actually happen.
If you’re an installer reading this and thinking, “Yep… we’re feeling all of that,” you’re not alone.
And if you want a hand tightening the parts of your operation that most directly protect revenue in a down market—customer communication, milestone updates, escalation prevention, review/referral flywheels, and AI-assisted support—reach out to us at Bodhi. We’re happy to compare notes, share what we’re seeing across the industry, and show you what “proactive customer experience at scale” can look like in practice.
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