When Tursun Ablekim noticed his neighbor getting a raw deal on rooftop solar panels, he decided to do something about it. Ablekim, who spent years working at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and First Solar, watched the sales process unfold and saw a pattern that frustrated him. Homeowners were paying way more than they should, not because solar hardware was expensive, but because of what the industry calls "soft costs" — things like sales commissions, marketing, and the complicated paperwork that pushes prices up 30% or even 40%.
"What is the point of a scientist spending years making a solar panel 1% more efficient if those gains are immediately wiped out by a sales process that adds 30% or 40% in 'soft costs' to the final price?" Ablekim asked in an interview. "We don't have a hardware problem; we have an information and efficiency problem."
So Ablekim built AgentSolar AI, a platform designed to act as a watchdog for homeowners. After gathering and analyzing over one million data points, his team discovered something shocking: Americans overpaid for rooftop solar by an estimated $2 billion in 2025 alone. He calls this extra cost the "sales-rep tax" on the energy transition.
Here's how it works. When a homeowner gets a solar proposal — sometimes a 40-page PDF full of confusing numbers — AgentSolar's AI reads through it, extracts the key financial details, and compares them against a massive database of fair market prices. Another part of the system checks the installer's background and customer reviews to make sure they're trustworthy. If something looks off, the AI doesn't just warn the homeowner — it takes action. It sends counteroffers to the company and negotiates better terms automatically. The homeowner doesn't see the final deal until AgentSolar is satisfied it's a good one. A real human also reviews every message before it goes out, just to make sure everything is accurate.
The tool is built on what developers call "agentic AI," which means it doesn't just spit out information like a basic chatbot — it actually does things on the user's behalf, similar to how a skilled assistant might handle negotiations for you.
Solar power has become one of the fastest-growing energy sources in the United States, but high costs have kept some families from switching. If tools like AgentSolar can push prices down to levels more common in Europe and Australia, where solar has been cheaper for years, more Americans might be able to afford clean energy for their homes.
Ablekim's big hope is simple: make the market fairer so that the money saved can go toward more solar panels, more jobs, and a faster shift away from fossil fuels.