

The tech jobs that'll profit most from the green energy boom - SunTzu55
http://news.dice.com/2014/10/13/green-energy-grows-tech-jobs/

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diafygi
For solar, hardware prices have decreased so much that soft costs are now the
significant majority (64%)[1] of installation costs. This means that in an
industry that's growing exponentially[2], there's enormous opportunity in
improving efficiency with software.

Why aren't there more software startups in solar? In my experience, it's for
two reasons:

1\. Most entrepreneurs associate the energy sector with hardware. Hopefully,
the DOE's publicity of the soft cost problem[3] in solar will help change this
perception.

2\. The pain points are really only visible to energy industry insiders. For
my startup (UtilityAPI), the pain point we're solving was only really visible
after a year of working in the industry.

[1] - [http://cleantechnica.com/2013/12/12/nrel-soft-costs-now-
larg...](http://cleantechnica.com/2013/12/12/nrel-soft-costs-now-largest-
piece-solar-installation-costs/)

[2] - [http://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-industry-
data](http://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-industry-data)

[3] - [http://energy.gov/eere/sunshot/soft-
costs](http://energy.gov/eere/sunshot/soft-costs)

