Tor 'Solar Fred' Valenza's Blost Posts

Boulder, Colorado: Leading Solar By Example

Boulder, Colorado has been on my solar radar for a number of years. It’s one of the cities that I covered in 2009 when part of my job was tracking solar rebates. They were generous...

Solar Fred's Top 5 Solar Marketing Wishes for 2012: Build Solar Communities

Welcome to Solar Fred’s 3rd annual Solar Marketing Wish List for the coming year.  If you haven’t granted my last two years worth of wishes, take another shot: Here’s 2010 and 2011....

What Some Solar Marketers Missed on Twitter Last Week: #SolarChat

On December 8th, Jeff Wolfe of groSolar and I were invited to lead a dynamic and informative marketing discussion on that thing many of you solar marketers disdain, misuse, or don’t...

Psst! Solar Fred Market Research Tip for PV Companies: Think Small and Think Service

Good news, solar PV manufacturers (and inverter companies, too). You may not be just a $/watt commodity after all, at least according to some new solar market research that was recently...

(Updated) Breaking News! Bill O'Reilly Says He Can't Get a Solar Quote. Anybody?

11/22/11 Update: We did it! Bill O'Reilly said on air that he had found a Long Island, NY solar installer to give him a quote. See this clip from mediamatters.org:     Thank you to...

A Solar Fred Conversation with Shawn Qu, Canadian Solar's CEO: Part 2 (Plus a Valuable Solar PR Lesson)

This is the second half an interview with Shawn Qu, Founder and CEO of Canadian Solar. It includes our conversation about competition from China, as well as a valuable solar PR leadership...

A Solar Fred Conversation with Shawn Qu, Canadian Solar's CEO: Part 1

When I interview people at SPI, it’s less of an “interview” and more of a conversation. There are questions, sure, but I often draw from my recent solar industry blog posts here and...

SolarWorld's Trade Complaint Announcement at SPI: PR Brilliance or Blunder?

For the moment, let’s forget whether or not SolarWorld and its six anonymous co-plaintiffs have a valid claim against the named Chinese solar manufacturers. What I want to discuss here...

3 SPI 2011 Solar Event Marketing Trends: Bigger, Sexier, and More Interactive

Just back from another great Solar Power International 2011, perhaps the largest SPI ever in terms of the number and the size of exhibits, though I believe attendance was a bit lower...

One Last Lesson Steve Jobs Can Teach the Solar Industry

Last week, I reposted a blog titled "5 Lessons Solar Companies Can Learn from Steve Jobs and Apple." There is one last observation that I only touched on in that post, and that is Jobs'...

Tor 'Solar Fred' Valenza

Tor 'Solar Fred' Valenza

Tor Valenza aka “Solar Fred” is the founder of UnThink Solar, a strategic communications firm dedicated to helping solar companies reach solar customers through innovative messaging, branding, and social media communications. Follow him...

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