Gregory Pitner had done all the research, crunched all the numbers. The nanoelectronics researcher from San Jose, California, knew that he wanted solar panels installed on his home. The only question was timing: Should he do it now? Or perhaps in a few months, when it was warmer? Maybe if he waited, the price would go down. Maybe he'd get a better quote.
Then President Donald Trump announced his decision to impose tariffs on solar panels imported from China. Pitner and his wife knew, from reading media reports, that the price of panels could soon rise. “It was a forcing function for us to make a decision,” he said. “We knew that if we had waited longer, we would have been impacted, and we were not sure how it would have affected us.” Pitner also knew that a huge financial incentive for installing solar panels was on the verge of expiring: the Investment Tax Credit, which covers 30 percent of the installation cost.
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