For those thinking about home solar, a group in San Francisco called 1BOG (for One Block Off the Grid: http://1bog.org ) is helping organize individuals into large purchasing units, thereby accessing some significant savings on home solar installations. Recent legislation extended and improved the available government rebates as well (with San Francisco proper benefitting particularly from an extra $6K in certain cases). All this adds up to much more affordable solar.
If you are at all interested, you can sign up at their web site for free and without any formal commitment, thereby gaining access to the current or next offering. By signing up you increase their/our bargaining power. Originally they were just operating within San Francisco, but they have rapidly expanded nationally and around here just reached another arrangement with SolarCity to work with anyone in pretty much the whole bay area from the looks of the map. The current deal is open for sign ups through Jan 31, I believe, but check out their web site for details. The grouped negotiation also comes with little perks like free energy usage monitors in this case and what sounds like a very streamlined evaluation and installation process that addresses your home site and needs.
So all in all it does seem like a win-win situation and a great application of the internet’s social organization ability, so I thought I’d pass the word via this other nice internet social organization! You can jump in now or join me in waiting for a future round (I didn’t get much warning I’d be eligible for this one, so my budget simply isn’t quite that flexible and responsive! It appears they accumulate sign ups until reaching a critical mass and then broker a deal).
They have a very nice breakdown of typical costs and terms for various sized installations and all kinds of useful FAQ’s on solar in general and their process. There are also simple worksheets to turn your monthly electrical bill into a good estimate of what size system you might need.
My primary remaining question is why in our society that until recently seemed so happy to embrace the tenets of pure capitalism, if you generate more energy than you need apparently the utility company will give you credit but does not pay you directly for it. It seems to me that it would be most environmentally (and war-reducingly) beneficial and more efficient if each household put in about the largest system they could and we really started making distributed solar energy, but if PG&E or whomever just takes that energy and sells it to someone else for profit while you build up infinite useless credit it really takes the ‘fun’ out of it.
Anyway, I’m interested if anyone knows more details on the laws and “why’s” of the last point, which perhaps could be discussed here below, but meanwhile pop over to…
http://1bog.org
and if it suits you, sign up!!
Cheers,
Seth
