Trends in Installer Strategy and Customer Choice on a Solar PV Financing Platform

In this study, we explore how solar photovoltaic (PV) installer strategies have changed over time with respect to PV financing products and how these strategies affect PV customer choice. We use a novel data set from obtained from a software platform that connects installers to institutional investors and helps installers generate financed quotes. This data set enables us to explore the behaviors of small and mid-scale installers, whose market strategies have largely been unknown owing to lack of data. We find that the financing platform extends access to financing to small- and mid-scale installers, that installers have shifted toward power purchase agreements over time, that installers appear to modify strategies in reaction to various policy and market drivers, and that installers tend to 'lock in' to a specific strategy.