Publish Date: January 19th, 2026
2025 was a wild ride on the solar coaster. And Namaste Solar weathered it with patience and strength. In this reflections and resolutions edition, we caught up with our directors of residential and commercial sales to talk about what we learned in 2025 and the optimism we have for Namaste Solar and the solar industry in 2026.
In one word, how would you describe 2025?
Anna Perry, Co-Owner and Director of Residential Sales: The word that comes to mind first for me is “opportunity.” There was a lot of opportunity in 2025, and I think our team mobilized and captured it efficiently. I’m very proud of that.
Rachel Mountain, Co-Owner and Director of Commercial Sales: What came to mind for me was simply, “successful.” We were successful in the fact that we had a banner year, and I think all departments did a wonderful job staying super focused on getting things done in 2025 while simultaneously working through what the future could hold, including the challenges, and I think that was really impressive.
How would you describe the state of the solar industry in 2025?
Anna Perry: For residential, I’d say booming. It was certainly the most urgency that we have seen in 10-15 years in our industry.
Rachel Mountain: Booming came to mind for commercial, too. It was kind of at risk and booming at the same time, with the changes in tax law. To Anna’s point, we saw a rush of projects come in which led to a super busy and successful 2025.
Namaste Solar in particular is really well positioned to weather whatever challenges are thrown our way. And I think we knew that in 2025, and I think it helped us stay focused because we’ve done it several times in our 20 year history. We’ve had utility program changes and other tax law changes that impact projects. There’s strength in the way we’ve diversified our business so that when there are external factors, we can lean into one sector of the business that’s going to have a more favorable market while a different one stabilizes and recuperates. And I think we’re seeing a great example of that right now where we’re able to repurpose a handful of our colleagues on the residential side to help do commercial installation work with the backlog that we’ve built on our team.
Looking back at the past year, what’s the biggest lesson that you learned in 2025?
Rachel Mountain: Biggest lesson learned in 2025 for me is that nothing is given. The Inflation Reduction Act was the most significant climate legislation passed in our history. It gave us a 10-year runway for the tax credit, and then pretty suddenly with the new administration in 2025, it was pulled out from under us. Our cooperative has often said we need to be able to sense and respond. And I think we did a really excellent job of that in 2025, navigating what those changes are going to be and making decisions so that we can continue to sell tax advantaged projects even when federal policy is changing.
Anna Perry: Absolutely. In the residential market, there was a lot of fear in 2025. And a lot of solar companies who don’t operate in the same way as Namaste Solar used that fear to their advantage. We sell on excitement and facts, not fear. We really let our morals show in 2025 – not selling on fear, leaning on our value proposition and the responsible use of solar energy.
So, one lesson I feel that we learned is how to be patient. We helped homeowners be patient through all the misinformation and fear that circled the changing tax laws. We didn’t jump on inaccurate information, and we encouraged our customers not to jump on the misinformation either. Rather, we waited for the facts to come out and once that came to fruition, we made the most of the available opportunities with honest approaches. So, we learned patience and the power of the non-fear sales approach.
What is one thing that Namaste Solar did in the past year that you’re proud of?
Anna Perry: Well, I just shared that I’m very proud of that holistic sales approach that we maintained even through a fearful year for homeowners. In a more tangible way, I’m also very proud that we mobilized and built a wait list that set our team and homeowners up for success so that we weren’t overpromising but we were allowing our installation crews to go right up to that December 31st deadline. We didn’t overpromise to our homeowners and had a really great plan if we didn’t get to install a waitlist project in 2025. That ended up being a small percentage of our waitlist, and we were able to offer them a significant discount for a 2026 installation. This strategy allowed us to retain almost everyone from the waitlist, and it’s a strategy that was deployed smoothly and benefited both homeowners and the cooperative.
Rachel Mountain: Without getting too far into the details, about half of our 200 employees are co-owners or are on track to becoming co-owners. And because 2025 was so successful, balanced with the fact that we believe 2026 is going to bring new challenges, we opened our profit sharing pool to all the employees of our company, recognizing the significant contributions that everyone made in 2025 to give us a record year. I’m really proud that we care about our people and try to do right by all of them, regardless of ownership status.
What is one accomplishment your team had a part in this year that you’re proud of?
Rachel Mountain: The commercial sales team had a record year in terms of revenue and gross profit sold in 2025. Why I’m so proud of that is because it’s going to allow for some of that resource sharing I mentioned earlier. This year, and moving forward as needed, we have a big backlog of commercial work that can hopefully allow us to repurpose people instead of having to face significant layoffs like some of our competitors in the industry might be faced with.
Anna Perry: One thing I want to highlight is the resiliency of our sales team in 2025. There were so many ups and downs, so many moments when we didn’t have all the information, but we still needed to communicate with homeowners and answer questions. They stayed strong as a team, leaned on each other both technically and emotionally during really, really busy times. They were really dynamic, and I’m really proud of them for that.
How did you grow personally or professionally in the past year? How did Namaste Solar support that growth?
Rachel Mountain: I’ll go personal on this one. It’s an easy one for me. I became a first-time mom in 2025. The company supported me in taking 14 weeks off so that I could spend that time with Melody, with my husband, and I’ve had nothing but complete support from my team and those that I work with upon my transition back. And like I mentioned earlier, one thing I love about this company is that we do care about our people and recognize the fact that we are full humans inside and outside of work. I felt that very strongly in 2025 with this transition in my life in particular.
Anna Perry: It was a relatively stable market in 2024, when I first stepped into this role, and 2025 has tested me in a lot of ways. I learned so much about policy and industry changes. And I feel like I grew up in my director role this past year because of all the challenges and changes that we’ve had forecast and navigate, some that we’ve never faced in our 20-year history before. It’s been an incredible opportunity to be in a leadership role during that. In a big way, I feel grateful because I do feel that I’ve grown up in this role and because of these challenges in ways that I might not have had the opportunity to do in previous years. The growth has been so valuable, and it will set me up for success in future years.
What do you hope for the solar industry in 2026?
Rachel Mountain: Well, I don’t want the industry to sit around, hoping and waiting for a new administration who will bring back the tax credits. Instead, I hope that we take a good look at ourselves and recognize that we can do this; we can stand on our own two feet. It’s going to take buy in from all stakeholders. Like us as a solar contractor, we’re going to have to figure out how to do things more efficiently. Our partners in the supplier and manufacturing industry are going to have to find a way to offer reduced pricing. Our customers are going to have to find a way to place more value on some of the intangible benefits of solar and maybe accept a lower return on investment. So everyone involved is really going to have to work together to offer a product that still exists moving forward, and I have no doubt that we will be able to do that.
Anna Perry: I want to echo what Rachel said because that’s a lot of what I was going to say and it applies to the residential world as well. There are so many reasons to go solar, and 2026 is such a fantastic year to add it to your home or business.
What’s one goal you have for 2026?
Anna Perry: I have a lot of goals. The number one goal that comes to mind is maintaining team morale. I really want my team to feel confident that they can sell solar, that people want solar, and that they are part of an organization that is still doing good and still making a big difference in this world. There’s just been a lot of speculation about the industry declining, and the people on our team do such good work and they care so much. They deserve for that hard work to pay off and make them feel like they’re here for the right reasons. And so I’m really focused on team morale.
Rachel Mountain: I love specifically the first part of your answer, Anna, because it just highlights what comes to mind for me throughout this whole thing, which is the care that we have for our people. And so the fact that one of the top goals that comes to your mind is caring for your team is just a great reflection of that, and I think it’s true on every team at this company.
I’ll keep mine pretty high level. What I want to keep in mind is our core value of long-term thinking. I think that’s going to be hugely foundational to all the decisions that we make in this upcoming year. We don’t want to be too reactive. We have a changing market to navigate. To Anna’s point, we’re going to be looking at new ways of selling with new products, with new value propositions, and we’re going to have to work through some of that. And I want to make sure that we’re thinking about the future and taking a thoughtful approach and doing so in a way, to Anna’s point again, that our team and our individuals on our teams feel confident and comfortable. It might take a little bit as we figure it out, but we will get there together.
How can our cooperative continue to improve in 2026?
Anna Perry: When it comes to the cooperative, to Rachel’s point, we just have to be really adaptive. We have always been adaptive as a cooperative because of the solar coaster, and we need to continue doing that. We already have a lot of empathy for each other, but I think we need to continue having that in 2026, maybe at a more even heightened level because of the unprecedented challenges we’re facing and the uncharted waters. I don’t want to act like it’s an improvement because we certainly already have empathy for each other, but just highlighting the continuity of that and maybe a more heightened focus on that in 2026.
Rachel Mountain: I think that’s a really great point because in any company there’s going to be tensions between teams, right? We often talk about field/office divide or residential/commercial divide or whatever it is, like those things exist. So, let’s make sure that we are working from a place with trust with one another, with empathy with one another, to not have most of our energy focused on internal politics. We’re all faced with the same challenges. We all want to go in the same direction. And let’s work together to do that.
I’m also thinking a lot about our external partners that we’ve built over our time in history. With Amicus, we’ve got this group of 80 other solar contractors across the country. These are reliable and experienced partners. How can we leverage each other to be creative moving forward. And I think it’s our external partners as well as our people. We’re creative, we’re deploying conscientious business practices, we’re entrepreneurial, we’re resilient, we’re employee owned. We have 200 people at our cooperative that think like business owners. And I think if we can leverage the power of that creativity and that experience, we will improve both ourselves and the benefit to all our stakeholders.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Anna Perry: I feel, and I think Rachel agrees, extremely bullish that 2026 is going to be a great year. The industry is there. There are so many reasons to go solar in 2026, and it’s a fantastic year to add it to your home or business.
Rachel Mountain: We are in a good position to continue to help people go solar, and to help people with our service and O&M departments. If you already have a system, we are going to be around to continue providing that top-notch service.
