excess energy would be slashed by about 75% that led to an mad dash to install the systems, said keith crutchfieldner of solar in santa rosa. >> for the first part of the year we were insanely busy and it was kind of liketo keep up with that amount of demand in such a compressed timeframe. that demand, after april 15th, fell off a cliff. it stopped basically wants april 15th happened , it went away. >> since then, he says he has seen many solar companies go out of business, especially those who grew too fast during the run up. >> basically, no business is , in their entirety, survive a cliff when it comes to a drop off in demand . you can't design for that. >> reporter: with the energy institute at uc berkeley's school of business is the old rate was much too generous, leaving those without solar to pay a higher cost to support the power grid and he says the new policy would still be a good deal for solar adopters, just not quite as good as before. >> the solar industry has fought a very hard fight against this change in policy by saying that the new policy would devastate their industry because n