Land-ho, me hearties — Solar is taking to the high seas! PlanetSolar launched a boat that is covered with 500 square meters of solar panels — then they sailed it around the whole earth using nothing but sunshine.

You might ask why they chose solar as the renewable power source, when people have been using (equally clean) wind to navigate the big blue for millennia. At Sungevity we think solar makes sense on a roof to generate clean and cheap electricity, but we are a creative bunch and love the way Raphael Domjan, founder of Planet Solar, was thinking outside the box! According to him, the idea was to demonstrate that the solar technology is here, now, ready and viable today, and can do more than anyone thought possible.

(It also just looks really cool.)

Agence France-Presse — Getty Images. Erwann Le Rouzic, captain of the PlanetSolar, on Tuesday, the 581st day of sailing, in the Mediterranean near Corsica.

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If you’re reading this, you have access to electricity. High five, that is a wonderful thing! Unfortunately, hundreds of millions of people in the world don’t. Electricity to most of us who have it is a matter of comfort — it means cold beers, hot showers, and infinite youtube videos of cats. (Rock on, piano kitty)

To those who don’t have it, access to electricity means something a little bit different. It means proper education because children can do homework at night. It means better eyes and lungs because it replaces burning kerosene. It means access to information and media like radio, television and internet, and lets citizens be politically involved.

There is a universal need for electricity but a fundamental lack of access. Grids are expensive and difficult to build in rural areas, especially in developing countries. But all those places where grids can’t reach get touched by sunshine. Could solar be the solution? A growing number of for-profit businesses are saying yes.

Eigth19 is one such business, and its product IndiGo is providing Solar For Universal Need. Their product is a solar panel and light kit that customers pay a little upfront for ($10), and then just $1/week for the electricity it produces. Going solar with IndiGo saves customers money, it is cleaner, and it is more effective than the kerosene they would alternatively use. And it’s pay-as-you-go, like Sungevity’s Solar Lease — so you don’t have to buy the expensive equipment outright, but rather get to pay it off as you use it, and experience the savings in real time without waiting years to see a return on investment.

Eight19 Samuel Kimani in Mwiki, Kenya (Photo: Eight19 Ltd)

There is a universal need for solar. Sungevity is spreading it to homes in the United States, Europe, and Australia, and we love companies that spread it to the developing world. SFUN is serious business — but when it comes down to it, solar is just fun plain fun too! Who doesn’t love sunshine!?

Eight19, we salute you. Shine on!

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Here’s a story that is so cool it’s even helping reverse global warming!

Every time a friend who you refer goes solar with Sungevity, you’ll each get $500. Going solar is good for your wallet, it’s good for the planet, and referring solar makes it good for your friends too! (…Which then makes it even better for your wallet and better for the planet. It’s a big high-fiving happy-fest of goodness and savings.)

Wendy, one of our amazing customers, went even further. She was trying to figure out how to use the $500 referral bonus to do even more good for her wallet and even more good for the planet. She thought about the 40-year old fridge in her basement, Ol’ Subzero. It was thunking away day in and day out, chewing up 20% of her electric bill each month and causing a whole bunch of carbon emissions.

Wendy’s a smart cookie — so she spent the money on a new energy efficient fridge to replace it. The new fridge that will help save the planet and save her money in the future (just like going solar)! Saving money and saving the planet is win-win. Using those savings to keep on saving is win-win-win!

Congratulations, Wendy! Do you have a Win-Win-Win Story for us? We’d love to hear it! Write it in the comments below or on our wall at facebook.com/sungevity.

You probably already know that solar energy works, is right here right now, and is already helping thousands of people save money and the environment. You might also have heard that Sungevity is leading the way by doing everything imaginable to make it easy, affordable and fun for families to power their lives with sunshine. In fact, you might have already gone solar yourself! But – you may not know exactly how we do it.

We made this picture to show how we spread sunshine, and to help you explain it to your friends. We hope you like it!

Sungevity revolutionized solar with the iQuote. We built it to be an instant, internet-based, interactive solar quote that would use satellite imagery to show a picture of your house with solar on it. All of this, produced for free in under a day. We knew that if solar were going to spread it would need to be fun and engaging to learn about, be easy, and above all, not take much time. We built it for you.

And you responded! Thousands upon thousands of you have requested iQuotes and shown your friends what your homes would look like if you powered your lives with sunshine. You have played with the sliders to see how much money you would save if you went solar. And you’ve marveled at how many trees worth of carbon your solar system would offset.

The iQuote changed everything. And to herald in the start of Spring week we made it even better. We gave it a slick new look and a bunch of new features, made it easier to use, and more fun to share. Most importantly, the things you told us you loved are still front and center: your house gone solar, the trees planted, and the money savings.

Go to sungevity.com to request an iQuote and see it for yourself!