By: Michael M., Blogger, Yellowlite, Inc.
How to get your neighbors or your boss to help you “Solarize” your home.
“Solarize” refers to a program for the collective purchasing of residential PV systems and was started in a south-eastern neighborhood of Portland, Oregon in 2009. It is a grassroots effort organized by a group of residents there to use the principle behind the “economy-of-scale” to reduce their costs for installing solar. It has turned out that this concept has been beneficial not only to homeowners but to solar companies as well. Solar companies have been able to reduce their marketing and customer acquisition costs and thereby reduce the costs of their systems by 30-35 percent, which they then pass on to their “Solarize Collective” customers. In addition to helping save a significant amount of money, joining a collective can also help take away some of the homeowner’s fears about going solar. Members of the group work together in tackling some of the more daunting technical issues such as, which PV modules and inverters to use, the building codes, and how to choose the right solar contractor.
Within 6 months Portland’s first neighborhood collective, known as Solarize Southeast, had signed up more than 300 residents and installed 130 new solar systems to provide 350 kW of clean, renewable solar electricity to Portland’s electric grid. The Solarize concept quickly caught on and thanks to the support of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Solar America Communities program. This program has grown and Portland now has over 1.7 MW of distributed solar being generated from 560 Portland rooftops and has created 50 new, full-time and good paying jobs for the local economy.
The news of Solarize’s popularity spread quickly and similar programs have popped up across the country with residential programs being successfully implemented in states such as Arizona, Colorado, Washington, Massachusetts, Vermont and California. The latest adaptation of Solarize can be found in the many group-buy-in programs that employers are now organizing, so that their employees can join and take advantage of the Solarize concept of volume discounts. In Colorado, local, state and federal employees joined together to install 691 kW of solar. In Arizona, some of the state’s largest employers, including the University of Arizona, Tucson Electric Power and the town of Oro Valley offered Solarize group-buy-in programs that have created 620 kW, so far. In California’s Silicon Valley, companies like Adobe, Genentech and Ebay have offered Solarize programs to make clean energy solutions simple and affordable for their employees which, thus far, have resulted in the installation of 330kW of solar.
To find out more about how you might organize a Solarize program in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Toledo, and Dayton area take a look at the basic steps outlined in the DOE’s Solarize Guidebook: A community Guide to Collective Purchasing of Residential PV Systems which can be found on the Department of Energy’s website. If you still have questions about how solar energy works, learn more today by reading answers to our Frequently Asked Questions.
So if you plan on buying the best solar panels, cheap solar panels, the most efficient solar panels, even sunpower solar panels for your home solar system, know that solar panels cost less than ever. Solar panels in Ohio, solar panels Columbus Ohio, solar panels Cincinnati Ohio, even solar panels Ontario, even solar panels for your home, your solar panel roof is ready to be installed. Check out our solar panel calculator, even if you want to purchase cheap solar panels in Ohio. YellowLite solar a solar installation company in Ohio as a solar installer Ohio.
