Discussions concerning the use and manufacturing of solar panels will be front and center as the annual Solar Summit 2018 continues near San Diego, California. Mark Niu has more.

Over the past several years, Silicon-Valley-based Jordan Redner has purchased 20 solar panels for his home. But partly due to the needs of his electric car, he's about to install 14 more.

JORDAN REDNER SOLAR PANEL BUYER "It helps me offset anything that the utility company is generating. It's clean for the environment. I like the idea of being carbon neutral."

Redner estimates he'll break even on his 24-thousand dollar investment in about six years. And just look over his shoulder, and it's easy to see that many of his California neighbors also feel it's worth the investment.

JORDAN REDNER SOLAR PANEL CUSTOMER "It's nice to know in the end that in another five years or so, when the investments paid for, you are going to get free electricity as long as you are going be in the same house, which I plan to. It's probably getting cheaper from my perspective, including installation and all that. So I really haven't seen it so far, any increases."

Due to the solar tariffs, Goldman Sachs estimates costs will go up around three to seven percent for residential and utility-scale operations. But customers may not notice, because solar prices have been decreasing by about 10 percent a year.

MARK NIU LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA Another reason the impact of the solar tariff has been lighter than expected is because of an exemption.

U-S President Donald Trump decided to allow the first 2 gigawatts of imported solar cells to be tariff-free.

BRYAN BIRSIC, CEO & CO-FOUNDER WUNDER CAPITAL "Before the tariff hit, it was well known by the industry that this was coming down the pike and so we have 160 plus partners in 30 states, most of those partners started buying a lot of hardware such that they could use that hardware during the course of this year without having the tariff applied. So actually the administration came in in support of solar and that allows a good bit of internationally made hardware to be brought into the country."

Bryan Birsic is the founder of Wunder Capital, a technology-enabled lending platform for solar projects. Although prices have barely been impacted, the waiting period of several months to find out what the Trump administration was going to do did impact jobs.

BRYAN BIRSIC, CEO & CO-FOUNDER WUNDER CAPITAL "I think it was the worst possible outcome for jobs because it was significant enough to slow down some of this growth in the installation space. We have more than 250-thousand people employed in solar these days and most of them are putting up the panels. There were only less than 25-thousand manufacturing jobs in the U.S. in solar, so this pricing actually hurts the installation, at least the growth of installation. And these are relatively high-paying blue collar jobs."

Birsic also says the tariffs simply weren't big enough to improve the competitiveness of U.S. solar manufacturers, even though he believes a bigger tariff would have been a bad idea. Mark Niu, CGTN, La Jolla, California.