The Power of Community: Slashing the Cost of Going Solar by Dave Llorens
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Everyone wins when we reduce our carbon footprint. It’s healthy for the environment, our families and our wallets. Individually or within a household, we can practice small, yet effective habits to see this through; we might recycle, grow a vegetable garden or carry reusable bags to the store.
At the other end of the spectrum are large-scale green practices, such as going solar. While equipped with the ability to create a massive reduction in carbon footprint, the process of going solar often requires more time, money and energy than is convenient for the average person. Studies from the International Energy Agency (www.iea.org) have shown that solar energy accounts for less than 0.1 percent of electricity produced in the United States. In 2008, I started One Block Off the Grid (1BOG) to address this incredible shortage through the facilitation of group purchase of residential solar.
Prior to that, I had been working at a solar company, managing every aspect of residential solar installations. I realized that the conventional process of going solar is complicated, expensive and far from user-friendly. It involves researching solar technologies, installers and local rebates, and being able to identify the differences between a kilowatt and a kilowatt-hour. All of this deters homeowners from actually taking the leap and going solar.
By creating “safety in numbers” through communities of interested homeowners, we can address the two main pain points associated with going solar: the process is expensive and arduous. Homeowners don’t need to become electricians when they update their homes’ wiring, so why should they become solar experts when they want to power their homes?
Purchasing solar power in a group is a safe, affordable and simple way to go solar and a means to rapidly boost solar energy use across the country. Through the concept of bulk discounts, the program negotiates lower rates from solar installers and provides unbiased, vendor-agnostic support to streamline the process.
Communities of homeowners are created through grassroots outreach and social networking to harness massive purchasing power (this typically yields a 15 to 20 percent discount from market rates).
Cities for the community programs are selected according to whether it would actually save money for homeowners to buy solar panels. In many places, residential solar power yields such high savings from electricity bills and local government incentives that its returns outweigh the initial costs within five years.
1BOG community participants are given impartial advice from solar experts without getting the “hard sell.” They know they can pick up the phone and get the answers and information they need, which boosts their confidence in the technology. To date, we’ve run campaigns in San Francisco, Sonoma County, San Diego, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Denver, Coachella Valley, Phoenix, Northern New Jersey, and San Antonio.
1BOG’s model—from the launch of four-month long city programs, creation of homeowner communities and selection of a local partner installer—has proven to be beneficial on numerous fronts. It allows homeowners to buy affordable, hassle-free solar and lets installers sell solar systems without having to invest in marketing and outreach. By streamlining the solar buying process, 1BOG has the potential to drive exponential growth of residential solar adoption and tip the scales toward independence from nonrenewable resources.
In the most recent San Francisco Bay Area campaign, members had the unique opportunity to support a graduate of nonprofit Solar Richmond’s green-collar job training program, providing green-collar graduates with two days of hands-on training with 1BOG solar installations. This enabled us to apply our proven model for improving residential solar adoption to empower disadvantaged communities.
1BOG’s ultimate goal is to increase the adoption rate for solar and energy-efficiency improvements to boost people’s confidence in purchasing green, big-ticket items for their homes. This program is setting the record straight about solar power being an extravagant, unattainable home improvement—not only can getting solar be simple, but it can also save homeowners thousands of dollars in electricity bills. Once solar adoption reaches a critical mass of acceptance and the use of renewable energy sources becomes the norm, we will gain more control of our country’s long-standing reliance on coal, oil and gas. This will increase demand for renewable power sources, drive down costs of alternative energy and massively reduce the carbon footprint of residential homes.
We’ve found that if one household on a block purchases a visible solar system, their neighbors are more than 10 times as likely to follow suit. As we exercise the power of community, solar-powered homes will eventually transition from novelty to normalcy.
Dave Llorens is co-Founder and CEO of One Block Off the Grid (www.1bog.org). Prior to 1BOG, he founded solarpowerrocks.com, a reputable source for solar industry information. Contact him at info@1BOG.org or 415.963.4339.