When the Trump administration tightened eligibility for a solar subsidy program, Indiana-based developer HSI Solar (No. 271 on the 2026 Top Solar Contractors List) didn’t bail on the farm and small business market segment. Instead, the company decided to reorient its efforts to helping those farmers and companies.
REAP Program Elimination and Its Impact
In August 2025, the U.S. Department of Agriculture revised its Inflation Reduction Act-backed Rural Energy for America Program (REAP). REAP provided cash grants equivalent to 50% of the total cost of a solar or wind facility.
“Unfortunately, the change in administration and the elimination of REAP grants has caused the agricultural market to decline over the past year and a half,” said Becky Pettit, vice president of operations at HSI Solar.
HSI has done projects around the country, but much of its work has come from the Midwest, and many of those initiatives were partly funded by REAP funds. So much so that HSI hired someone to write grants full-time instead of contracting it out. Despite the program ending, the firm is helping customers secure the REAP grant money they were promised to get their initiatives off the ground.
$3.5 million in REAP money has been allocated to HSI projects.
“The grants have helped shorten project payback periods to one or two years,” Pettit says.
Now, that financing is at risk.
“This is a problem that cannot be ignored,” she said.
Educating Rural Communities on Distributed Solar
Before the agricultural industry went into decline, HSI had been actively teaching farmers about solar projects. In 2023, the startup received grant money from the Indiana USDA to discuss PV with rural areas. HSI staffers traveled the state, setting up shop in numerous villages to talk to farmers directly about solar.
“There’s a lot of opposition to renewables on the utility-scale side,” says Pettit. “We’ve got some big projects in Indiana that are very visible, and that generate a lot of opinions. People know people who do not want renewable energy taking over farmland and benefiting non-local residents.”
“What we’re doing is behind-the-meter, on-site, distributed generation. We demonstrate to them solar can be installed on barns, carports, and small company parking lots. It’s something they’d never thought about before and we witness their enlightenment.”
Shifting to Industry Partnerships
HSI’s role in teaching has now shifted from a larger focus on educating the agricultural community about the benefits of solar to understanding what solar can accomplish for the agricultural community. Its staff lobbied at the state level with the director of the USDA and Indiana’s energy secretary.
HSI is collaborating with groups like the Dairy Sustainability Alliance and the land stewardship-focused Rural Land Use Council to have a deeper understanding of what dairy producers need.
“It’s not so much about us getting the word out,” Pettit said. “Our concern is primarily with what is interesting farmers presently. How do we fit into their current priorities and challenges if we don’t know what they are?”
