Retail customers of all ages are eager to buy residential solar panels, and one installation and maintenance company is talking about two main audience personas in its customer base.
Both baby boomers and millennials are keen to adopt solar, writes Kelcy Pegler Jr., president of NRG Home Solar, “but their real motivations provide us with a fascinating perspective on what tomorrow’s energy marketplace looks like: more innovation, more choice and control, lower cost, and something that’s good for the environment.”
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Many millennials will be buying their first homes in the next few years and think it’s “simply ridiculous” that their parents never got to decide who supplied their power, where it came from, or how it was produced. “They’ll ensure they get the type of electricity they want, where they want it, and how they want it,” he predicts. “Solar energy is this generation’s power source of choice.”
But boomers also want technology, as long as they can get some help getting started—Pegler talks about the older relative who is introduced to Gmail in January and often shows up on Twitter by March.
“When it comes to solar, they want to adopt it, but they want assurance that they aren’t making a bad decision, that they’ll still turn the lights on like they normally do, and that they still use their electricity the way they always did,” Pegler notes. “They also want to tell their neighbours how and why they did it,” which means they need clear answers for whoever asks.
