Each year, the United States continues to install more solar and is projected to install 10 GW over the next two years, according to the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration. Whether it’s residential, commercial or utility-scale, it’s clear to anyone paying attention that the Solar Revolution is here.

So the next big question is what happens next. How do we continue the revolution and expand its reach? And the answer to that question is becoming increasingly clear with each passing day.

The answer is pairing solar and storage together.

Watching the storage market evolve over the past several years has had a familiar refrain. At first, adding storage to solar systems was expensive, making it a niche market.

More recently, rapidly falling prices have made storage options affordable for more solar consumers. And while the technology still has a long way to go, if this trend continues the same way it did in the solar industry, storage will soon be a standard component of most solar installations.

Storage is the next logical step in pushing solar’s development forward. Whether it helps with grid stabilization or storing energy in less sunny climates, the pairing of solar + storage is a match made in heaven.

That’s why the solar industry needs to pay close attention to the storage market and in fact get involved in shaping its direction. It’s incumbent on us to get involved in the storage industry with the same strength and passion that we support our the solar industry—and we at Standard Solar are all in (and have been ever since we installed a solar+storage microgrid project for Konterra a few years ago and now through our most recent deal, a solar + storage project in New York, directly supporting New York State and Governor Andrew Cuomo’s energy goals).

We recently joined the Energy Storage Association, which is the national association that supports the storage market in the same way that the Solar Energy Industries Association supports the solar industry. The decision was ultimately easy, given how much we expect to be involved in the market in the coming years.

In fact, we are beefing up our team to meet these new requirements. Dan Dobbs, a longtime solar veteran whose career has included founding a solar + storage firm, has joined our team to reinforce our structured finance capabilities and launch new products in the solar + storage space.

The fight for solar + storage is now our fight, too. I’d urge you to get involved as soon as possible to shape the future of this new market that will be critical to our eventual growth as a solar industry.