Selling solar through storytelling

Before customers learn about net metering policies, virtual power plants or even what a kilowatt-hour is, they first need to overcome doubts about the technology — and that’s where stories come in.

June 30, 2025 David Kuchta

Image: Bill Mead, Unsplash

It’s a time-tested strategy in marketing: stories sell. This is especially true in emerging markets where hesitancy and confusion about new technologies can be overcome by stories of early adopters and satisfied customers. To better understand how solar installers tell stories to market their products and services, pv magazine USA spoke with Aaron Nichols, research and policy specialist at Exact Solar, a Pennsylvania-based company that has won numerous awards as an installer.

Nichols’ understanding of how to generate customer interest is quite simple. Stories drive interest in solar; facts and figures only close the deal. In a highly technical industry like solar, it’s easy to want to demonstrate the financial or environmental benefits of solar or explain how the technology works, but before customers learn about net metering policies, virtual power plants or even what a kilowatt-hour is, they first need to overcome doubts about the technology. That’s where stories come in. As Nichols recently told Nico Johnson of the SunCast podcast, “stories stick, facts fade … facts for the in-group, stories for the out-group.”

Nichols himself is relatively new to the solar business. Though he is certified as a NABCEP-PV Associate, he calls himself a “vagabond, not a master in the business.” He’s a former teacher and at heart a story-teller. When he joined Exact Solar, he drew on his background in media to develop a very successful story about how the company installed a solar-plus-storage system on a greenhouse in an inner-city Philadelphia school, where students grew and sold their own organic food. The story was featured in the local newspaper and picked up by the local National Public Radio chapter. From there the story went national, raising Exact Solar’s profile and generating enormous customer interest.

Through the ASES National Solar Tour, Nichols encouraged Exact Solar’s customers to tell their own stories using video interviews and drone footage, walking viewers through a virtual tour of their property and discussing how going solar improved their lives. He has also developed his own independent presence on LinkedIn and Substack, which helps feed leads to Exact Solar. Now, Nichols said Exact Solar has a greater backlog of customers than it’s ever had before.

Exact Solar is only one of numerous solar companies using social media to generate interest and overcome hesitancy. Everlight Solar’s website features a YouTube video of customers in their kitchens and living rooms speaking about their experience with the company. They recall being initially hesitant to speak with a door knocker “trying to sell us something,” worried about how solar would look on their roof, or were suspicious the financial deal that “it was too good to be true.”

Good stories offer sympathetic characters with obstacles that they seek to overcome. Solar marketing teams know those obstacles all too well: misinformation, doubts about the technology, fear of scams, and concerns about cost, among others. Featuring stories about how current customers have already overcome obstacles on their road to success helps potential customers see themselves taking that same hero’s journey.

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