Imagine, for a moment, it’s a sweltering July afternoon. You hear an unassuming knock on the door. Maybe you check your Ring camera to see a young man in a polo shirt, with a lanyard swinging. You open the door, and he launches into a pitch before you can even register the logo on his badge. “Hi, my name is John, and I’m working on the statewide clean energy initiative. Have you received a notice from your energy company about rate increases in the coming years?” 

It may not be immediately apparent, but he’s trying to convince you to buy solar panels. 

Summer is peak solar sales season, and crews canvass neighborhoods nationwide, generally in two-person teams. These door-knockers are there to set up an appointment with the “closer” — often on the same day — whose aim is to sell the homeowner a solar system.

Door-to-door solar sales are a widely accepted form of lead generation in the industry, despite being largely unregulated. While trade groups like the Solar Energy Industries Association do recommend best practices, both for the well-being of consumers and the overall health of the industry, high-pressure sales tactics remain pervasive. In sunnier states, such as California, Texas, and Florida, solar salespeople are often considered a nuisance. They frequently ignore “no soliciting” signs — claiming that they aren’t selling anything, simply setting up appointments — and their colleagues come along behind them pushing for quick sales or high commissions. 

Just as the solar market differs from state to state, depending on utilities and the companies selling the hardware, the pitches vary too, tailored to each community and the pain points homeowners may experience. Targeted opening lines might reference utility companies raising prices or how much homeowners could receive from a federal tax incentive. 

And now, with the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill tax and spending package that President Donald Trump signed into law in July, federal incentives are changing. Former president Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act offered a 30 percent federal tax credit on solar installations through 2034 — giving homeowners a decade to consider whether rooftop panels might be right for them. “That has been amended,” David Gahl, the executive director of the Solar and Storage Industries Institute, explained. “The credits are now only available to homeowners through the end of the calendar year.”

Under the new law, homeowners must have incurred qualifying expenses, such as payments for solar panels, battery storage, installation labor, or permitting fees, by the end of 2025. The shortened time frame creates urgency — and that gives door-to-door reps another leverage point to pressure homeowners to pursue solar faster than they may have originally planned. 

Before the spending package was even signed into law, it was already shaping how solar gets sold. At the end of June, I attended a door-to-door solar sales training with a company called Elevate Solar in Kansas City, Kansas. Trainers showed how the loss of tax incentives could be worked into sales pitches.

After pulling into a small parking lot behind a Domino’s Pizza, we climbed a dark set of stairs to a door that led us into an office newly furnished with folding chairs and tables. I was shadowing a team of three experienced door-knockers paired with a closer who primarily works in California but had come to Kansas City to test the market. 

“You can expect softer doors here,” said Nick Sinclair, vice president of sales operations for Elevate Solar. He meant that residents here haven’t been knocked as aggressively, making them not only friendlier, but more likely to buy.

After paperwork was signed, Sinclair and other representatives walked us through their sales strategies. “Pain equals a compelling pitch,” he said. “Even just the pain of that fear of the unknown.”

“Ask them if they’ve heard of the Big Beautiful Bill,” another rep added. “Most people have. Then tie in that they could lose federal tax incentives on solar.”

Sinclair said referencing current events is standard practice in his office. “That way the customer can connect with the idea,” he told me later in a phone interview. “I’ve been doing this for 12 years, and I’ve been at companies where there’s little to no training at all. I think it is more powerful to have well-informed reps that can speak to what homeowners are concerned about.”

Rising electricity prices make another effective selling point. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the nationwide average residential electricity price rose 6.5 percent between May 2024 and May 2025, climbing from 16.4 cents to 17.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. Some states saw far steeper increases, including Maine (36.3 percent), Connecticut (18.4 percent), and Utah (15.2 percent).

“So you’ve got this push and pull,” Gahl, from the Solar and Storage Industries Institute, said. “On one hand, federal policy changes are disincentivizing solar, but at the same time, people’s electricity bills are going up significantly. That trend is only going to continue, and it’s going to make on-site solar more attractive.”

For consumers, this creates both urgency and confusion, and the people tasked with helping them navigate this complicated landscape are often sales representatives. Some may take advantage of this fact to achieve their goal of making a sale — for instance, they may lead homeowners to believe that they’re signing up for a government program or something specifically sanctioned by their utility company. 

Sellers also commonly overstate the amount of money that people might save, which depends on how much power the homeowner uses, whether they qualify for any tax incentives, and if their utility offers an energy buy-back program. 

Let’s say you decided to schedule an appointment through John, the eager young salesman who offered you a pitch about a “statewide clean energy initiative.” A few hours later, the closing rep shows up at your door, walking you through the installation process. You sign a few papers. It’s a done deal. 

But once your system is installed, you get an energy bill, and not only do you owe nearly the same amount as before, but you’re paying a monthly payment on solar panels as well because your system was never connected to the grid correctly. Essentially, solar doubled your monthly utilities when the sales team promised to eliminate them. So, you try to call John or the closing rep, only to be sent to voicemail. You try again the next day and realize they’ve blocked your number. 

Alex W., a solar sales representative with over five years of experience in the industry who asked to be identified by last initial only for fear of reprisals, said actions like this are not uncommon.

“Generally, if the company gives you a pitch, you repeat that pitch. It’s a numbers game. So, the more doors you hit, the more money you make,” Alex said. In other words, the sales representatives, who are often paid only on commission, are incentivized to keep making more sales rather than support their clients once they’ve signed for purchase. 

But Alex, who believes that a more honest solar sales industry is possible, argues that salespeople shouldn’t just memorize a pitch. “I think reps need to do their own research and not just follow what their boss is telling them, because it is constantly evolving,” Alex explained. “Selling in 2018 is not the same as selling now. Selling last year is different from selling this year. The buy-back rates change every single year. Eligibility for federal tax incentives has changed. Everything is changing all the time, and the reps need to know about all those changes.”

For homeowners, solar can be an incredible tool for lowering energy costs and contributing to a cleaner energy future, but the process requires careful attention. And that may include a hearty amount of skepticism about claims that door-to-door salespeople make. “That’s what sucks,” Alex said, “because you’ll have some reps who sit in front of you and explain everything in detail, answer all your questions, but then you have other reps who are, I’m sorry to say it, liars. So it leaves the homeowners asking, ‘Well, who do we believe?’”

Sinclair echoed the sentiment. “There’s good companies and bad companies, good reps and bad reps,” he said. “I think the good companies do want regulation to come into the industry.” 

He added that being on the ground has some undeniable advantages. “We are there to create interest,” Sinclair said. “The reason we go door-to-door is simply the cheapest cost of customer acquisition. You don’t know if someone is a good candidate [for solar] because of trees, roof quality, or the position of their home until you see it.” While drumming up that interest, salespeople might emphasize pain points, as Sinclair described in the training in June. But he also noted that his company takes steps to ensure customers are not misled. “If reps misrepresent that tax credit or other programs, we do the quality control when scrubbing the deal with the closer. If they’re out there saying that they’re going to get a check in the mail no matter what, that’s irresponsible and it’s bad for business.”

The consequences of a bad sale extend beyond one household or even one company, giving solar energy itself a bad name. “It just screws the industry, because if you have a bad rep sell [to] Sally, then suddenly Sally is telling the entire neighborhood and all of her friends, so they’re not getting solar,” Alex said. 

Several factors may influence a person’s decision to install solar panels on their home. Shifting federal incentives are only half of it; there are also various state and local regulatory decisions that impact the economics of a solar project, like how long it takes a home solar installation to get connected to the utility grid. Then there’s the system sizing for a person’s home, and the choice between buying the panels outright through a loan, leasing them from a company, or other payment structures. 

With all these moving pieces, the homeowner who takes the time to ask the right questions, do their own research, and verify the credibility of their representative is far more likely to see solar’s benefits without costly surprises. Because in the end, no matter how well-meaning John the sales rep may seem at your door, in such a confusing and unregulated solar market, you need more information before you know if you can take his word for it.