On top of a courthouse in eastern Wyoming one can see mountains in the distance, but on the roof are several rows of glistening black solar panels. 

“So, they're angled a little bit so they can get the best production. It's facing due south,” said solar electrician Andrew Weatherford, who recently installed the arrays.

Weatherford loves an adventure, so climbing up on Wyoming roofs year-round is a good fit. 

“We're doing this when it's 100 degrees in the summertime. And then when we're working and it's December, clearing snow off roofs in two degrees, zero degrees,” Weatherford said.

He unspooled electric cords that will run from the roof to a control box about 60 feet below. 

“To connect the power that's produced from the solar panels to the building,” he said.   

Weatherford works for a company called Creative Energies, one of the few rooftop solar installation companies in Wyoming. And they are bracing for what business will look like in the new year.  

Since 2005, homeowners who wanted to install solar panels could get some help from the federal government: It would pay for about a third of that cost. But residential clean energy credits are going away at the end of the year. The recently passed GOP policy bill gets rid of those incentives. 

It is partly because of those incentives that Creative Energies was able to expand in recent years, in a state that’s otherwise dominated by oil, gas, and coal. Co-owner Scott Kane showed off their giant shop building at their headquarters in Lander, Wyoming.   

“We like to think of it as the epicenter of solar energy for the state of Wyoming,” Kane said. 

Inside it feels like a full-on hardware store — tools, electrical supplies, solar panels and trucks, everything they need to service projects around the state. Kane said they built the shop a couple years ago.   

“We noticed, like, ‘Woah there’s been a lot of demand for solar and we're having a hard time keeping up with the demand that's out there,’” said Kane.  

The federal tax credit for residential rooftop solar was beefed up under the Biden administration, driving more business to Kane. But the incentive first came about under President George W. Bush. The original solar tax credit was supposed to taper down after just a couple years. “It's been extended because subsequent administrations saw that the program was working well,” Kane said.

But congressional Republicans voted to completely end the 30% tax credits, saying the solar industry had been subsidized long enough.  

“So that went from being, you know, almost a 20-year-long program, to ending overnight,” said Kane. “So that really feels like a scramble right now.”  

A scramble to install panels for the surge of homeowners who want the credit before it goes away. In fact, Kane has had to turn some customers away.  

“We can't get their project built before the end of the year,” he said.  

Kane is unsure whether demand will still be there when the price for solar installs goes up. His business is shifting from growth mode to maintenance.  

“Rather than continuing to add people and and invest in vehicles and invest in new buildings, to more of a like, let's sustain the business mindset,” he said.   

Still, Kane knows how to adapt. He helped found Creative Energies in 2001, when Wyoming’s fossil fuels were booming. The state is the top producer of coal in the country.  

“Some might say that, ‘A renewable energy company — you're operating in Wyoming? Like that must feel like you're operating behind enemy lines,’” Kane said.  

But he found a niche demographic, from eco-minded homeowners to survival types who do not want to rely on the grid.   

“The idea really plays that like, ‘Hey, we grow our own food, we hunt for our own meat. Let's produce our own power,’” Kane said.  

Federal tax credits for commercial buildings are not ending for another couple years, so Kane hopes to tap more into that market. Like the eastern Wyoming courthouse project, where electrician Andrew Weatherford feeds the cords to his work partner, Noah Rohrbacher. 

“That should be it and we should be able to fire this system up and see what it’ll be able to do for the building,” Rohrbacher said. 

Ticking off one more solar project before year’s end.