Welcome to the
Run on Sun Monthly Newsletter

Getting some Google Love

Traffic to a company website is an important way of bringing in new business.  The more authority your website is deemed to have, the more search engines like Google will drive traffic to you.   But gaining that authority is a challenging proposition.  It requires a website that satisfies Google's design criteria (loads quickly, displays properly on a variety of devices, etc.), and has useful content, typically the more useful content the better.

As readers of this Newsletter know, back in August of 2019 our then domain, runonsun.com, was hijacked and we were forced to start from scratch at our present domain, runonsun.solar.  All of our old links to our popular content were broken, with no way to redirect them. So how has that turned out?  Check out this graph:

The peak out to the left is from August 2018, when we wrote about our experience seeing the Enphase IQ8 in the lab.  That spike - 6,906 unique visitors to the website - was our all time high for monthly traffic.  Until now, that is.

The cliff drop is our traffic in the month after the August 2019 hijack, a whopping 181 visitors for the month of September - ouch!  Traffic limped along for an entire year before we started to regain some of our prior clout, getting above 5,000 visitors in a month for the first time after the hijack this past October.

But what just happened in January? Traffic went through the roof, coming just shy of 10,000 visitors in a month for the first time ever!  Cool!

So what is driving the spike?  Astonishingly, it is mostly driven by a single blog post, written all the way back in February, 2017!  Here's the link: I've got solar; why is my bill so high?

It turns out that this is a question that the public asks a lot.  (That is something of a sad commentary right there!)  My detailed answer to that question (the post is 2,153 words long!) appears to be the definitive response, at least as far as Google is concerned.  As more people feel the need to ask that question, our answer drives ever more traffic.  

All of which is pretty interesting - key posts drive the greatest amount of traffic, and help bring a hijacked domain back from the dead.  Now we just need to figure out how to replicate that success several times this coming year!

Any questions you would like us to answer?  Maybe your question will be the next big traffic driver!  

Enphase joins the S&P 500!

It will come as no surprise to our followers that we are BIG fans of Enphase Energy, and have been for more than a decade!  Wow!

Yet what just happened is really a remarkable testimony to the dedication and hard work of the entire team at Enphase: their stock just got included in the S&P 500!   This is the capstone to one of the most dramatic turnarounds of all time: from sub-one dollar days back in the spring of 2017, to a 52-week range this past year that shot from $24 to $213, Enphase has been on an epic run!

But how did we get here?  A change in management first and some very painful internal re-workings, with a sharp eye on the bottom line and the absolute demand to drive down costs, increase margins, and still bring the most technologically sophisticated products to market.  That would be a very tall order for any company, but Enphase has succeeded.  And this is not some GameStop bubble - rather, this is what happens when you lead the market with the best products in your class!

Yet to be fully factored into all of this is the growing impact from sales of the Ensemble Storage System (more on this below). Oh, and the IQ8 for residential roofs is coming, as is the IQ8D for commercial installations!

All and all, looks like a banner year in store for our friends at Enphase - well done! 

Enphase extends deadline for Ensemble Storage System rebates!

Last December, Enphase announced a rebate program for the new Ensemble Storage System.  That program offered rebates up to $1,000 toward the purchase of Encharge 3 ($166 each) and Encharge 10 ($500 each) storage modules.   However, there was a major hitch: contracts had to be signed by January 31^st and systems installed by April 30^th to qualify.

For those that jumped at the chance, this was great.  But given the typical slowdown in solar interest during the winter months, a lot of potential clients weren't really paying attention.     

That makes the latest announcement from Enphase really great news: the deadline for signing a contract has been extended to February 28^th, and the deadline for the system being commissioned is now July 30^th!  (Given what we are seeing from utilities and AHJs with storage, that extra time is really important.)

Note that this rebate only applies to folks with existing Enphase systems with IQ, M215, or M250 microinverters as of December 7, 2020.

So - the window to get that contract signed is just a few weeks more - give us a call today and let's get you signed up and in the queue to take advantage of this great offer.