Think of it a a solar power co-op. Communities group their purchasing power to get better pricing. SolarCity offers community programs where the town/city inhabitants can buy home solar systems as a group and receive volume discount pricing.
The way the program appears to work (from the website), the individuals in the community are offered a group discount on new solar power systems from SolarCity if the community meets an amount of power signed up for with in a certain period of time. Goals appear to be either 50kW or 175kW (I assume based on the community size) with 3 to 5 months to meet the goal. Since the average solar system is 4kW, about 45 homeowners need to sign up to meet the usual 175kW goal. If the goal is reached, discounts of up to 30% on the cost of the solar power systems are realized.
SolarCity is offering this program in California and their website shows 12 communities have enrolled in the program. The sign up window for the listed communities has expired, so I cannot tell how many are now attempting to meet their criteria. This article shows 19 communities in the program.
Besides installing the power systems, SolarCity offers the ability to get real time readout of their customer’s solar panels through an Internet portal. This allows customers to insure their systems are working at optimum efficiency. With systems costing $20,000+ and expected to last 25 years, this could be a valuable service.
I think this is a creative and aggressive way to expand the use of solar power and I hope SolarCity has a lot of success with their program.
3 Comments
If this cooperative solar model could penetrate rural markets and the electric coops nationwide it would be huge. Specifically, I see the technical barriers being brought down if a proposed amendment in the current farm bill passes. The amendment would dedicate significant funds to extend broadband internet services to rural populations in this country. If rural folks could tie into a web-based network of other small-scale generators, they could have the ability to access power trading markets for when their wind isn’t blowing or their sun isn’t shining.
Great article Tim!
SolarCity has had a tremendous success already with their community purchase programs. They have exceeded goals in all of there programs and have grown to the #1 residential installer in California.
The best thing about the program is it has driven down the cost of solar bringing economies of scale to the industry and extending that discount to the customer. This in turn has driven down the price community wide in solar as other installers try and compete.
The better they do the sooner we see solar at grid parity, eliminating less friendly sources of energy all together.
Go SolarCity.
I was the volunteer organizer of the Community Solar Program in Mountain View, a city of 75,000, more than half of whom rent. It went extremely well, and 119 families signed up to go solar.
The whole experience was so meaningful and powerful to me that I asked the CEO of SolarCity for a job helping organize other community purchasing programs. He said yes, and that’s what I do full time now. It’s an extremely fulfilling job. If you’d like to read about the Mountain View program, see http://mvsolar.blogspot.com. If you’d like to contact me about a Community Solar Program in your city, please fill out the very brief form at the bottom of this page: http://www.solarcity.com/tabid/137/Default.aspx
Cheers,
Bruce Karney