Planno founder and CEO Daniel Domingues published an op-ed in Solar Power World arguing that the commercial rooftop segment holds far more capacity than the industry's referral-driven pipeline reflects.
The piece uses New Jersey as the case study. The state has 88,429 commercial and industrial rooftops carrying 22 GW of viable solar potential, yet only 7.2% have solar today — leaving 17.5 GW untapped on roofs that are already at load, grid-connected, and permitted for commercial use. That untapped capacity is more than four times New Jersey's current total installed solar.
The gap is widest at the top. Large-format rooftops above 50,000 sq ft carry the strongest project economics but sit below 30% adoption — distribution centers, pharmaceutical campuses, cold-storage, and big-box retail, most of which have never had a solar conversation. The opportunity is concentrated: across PSE&G territory alone, 48,422 sites hold 10.5 GW of unbuilt rooftop solar, with Middlesex, Union, Bergen, and Hudson counties carrying most of the large-format capacity.
Domingues argues the real constraint is no longer demand but interconnection — stretched PJM queue times, and anticipated New Jersey restrictions on agricultural land that will redirect developers back toward rooftops and increase competition for queue slots. His conclusion: the developers who prospect from rooftop data, lead with fuel-cost framing over ESG, and file interconnection early will outgrow the C&I market over the next two years.