By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent
What Happened: The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA)rolled out an aggressive four-point plan to broaden its base and launch a new era within the association. Their plans, according the website, include:
- Ensure that existing solar markets remain open and robust, while opening new ones;
- Reform electricity markets to better enable solar use at highest values;
- Represent solar nationally, including as the voice of and market research center for the industry; and
- Ensure SEIA continually evolves to offer value to its members and grow revenue to support its activities.
“The solar industry is going on the offense,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, SEIA’s president & CEO. “We will do whatever needs to be done in order to ensure fair competition among energy sources. As a trade association, we will conduct ourselves commensurate with the largest source of new energy in a trillion dollar electric power industry.”
SolarWakeup’s View: A step forward! Over the past few years (at least as long as I’ve been in the industry), the ongoing conversation in the hallways of the conferences was this: Why isn’t SEIA more involved in the broader 
solar industry, working for the small companies as well as the large? It has been a particular issue as SEIA was in growth mode, but some people were still asking the question after Abigail Ross Hopper took the reins a little more than a year ago.
It appears, however, that SEIA has been like a duck – calm on the surface but furiously paddling underneath.
This new vision is SEIA’s attempt to start with a clean slate, and I, at least, am willing to give them a chance to execute on it. If they do, then a new day could be dawning at SEIA, and the solar industry will be better for it.