Solar flare Industry worried expiring tax credit could send it on another downward spiral

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History repeating itself — that’s what Scott Keller, sales manager at Garden State Solar LLC, pictures.

He’s thinking of a story that begins with the solar industry’s shining moment in the ’80s, when Keller first entered photovoltaic panel sales. The government was pouring resources into incentivizing it and no one wanted to be left in the cold.

It was a niche market, but it couldn’t have been hotter.

“Then the government pulled out,” Keller said. “The federal tax advantages stopped and the industry fell flat on its face. And that affected the market for years and years.

“Now here I am, giving it another go in the market now that it has been doing well. But I’m concerned what will happen when those incentives go away once more. I see the solar market falling flat again.”

What Keller is nervously envisioning — perhaps alongside the 500 other solar companies in New Jersey — is the decline of the federal government’s 30 percent investment tax credit, which it currently offers as an incentive to projects using solar and other renewable energy sources.

That credit will be reduced to a 10 percent rate at the end of 2016, save a political intervention. Among other reasons this is worrisome for Keller and the solar industry at large is that such a strict deadline is prompting a dash to develop, which may lead to a boom and bust.

But on the roller coaster that is New Jersey’s solar industry, no one is green about the market’s potential for rises and falls.

It’s for that reason members of the local solar industry, still among nation’s leaders in scale, is once again calling on leaders to bring more predictability to a too-uncertain market as it nears another plunge.

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Whether the federal government will steer clear of a solar incentive reduction is up for debate.