Sungevity Blog / home solar systems

Kudos to friends over at Clean Edge and the venerable non-profit organization, Co-op America. They have just released a report called Utility Solar Assessment (USA) that shows that by 2025 10% of US electricity should come from solar technologies.

What is really cool about this study is how it was based on real-world numbers and interviews with existing companies to create a roadmap to get us to such a great result. The jobs and wealth created; aside from the money saved for consumers in such a scenario, are enormous.

8% of that 10% figure is expected to come from photovoltaic rooftop systems - the kind of solar systems Sungevity is set to bring to your home - and small solar farms.

As the authors point out, solar power offers a number of advantages over conventional energy sources. Among them, the ability to deliver energy at or near the point of use, zero fuel costs, minimal maintenance requirements and zero carbon-based source emissions.

According to them, prices will improve greatly too. Remember though, the best time to install solar really was yesterday. Don’t wait until prices come down as the money you’ll spend on increasingly expensive electricity between now and then will outweigh the price drop. We know you’re all long-term planners to this will make plenty of sense.

At Sungevity, we think the growth of solar will be even faster than this, and the point at which solar reaches parity, or is equal in cost with fossil-fuel (or fossil-fool, if you will) grid electricity, will come sooner than this report suggests. It is great to have studies like this that show the viability of the technology.

Hats off to Ron, Clint and Alisa - thanks for your work!
Shine on, DannyK

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Everyone is excited about the recent announcement that San Francisco is about to take real action on climate change, even the folks at Grist.org who think this is a foggy idea. But let’s take a look at the whole picture…

While fog figures prominently in our mindset about San Francisco, San Francisco compares quite well with all cities in California for solar production according to the California Solar Initiative’s website. When you take into account an entire year of sun hours, the city as a whole has great solar potential. The days that we really need power, the hot days when the air conditioners crank on, are the days with no fog. That’s when solar systems are producing maximum power.

Solar systems in cooler cities like San Francisco are very productive because solar production is reduced when the panels and inverters get too hot. This happens in cities that bake all the time, and can actually result in lower solar energy production. San Francisco compares well with all cities in California for production according to the California Solar Initiative’s website (http://www.csi-epbb.com/). A Sungevity Kit A in San Francisco would only produce 5% less than if it were placed in LA or San Diego, and about the same if it were in a hot fog-less city like Fresno, Bakersfield and Sacramento.

Like we said in response to Grist’s piece, Germany has the largest solar market in the world and they have the solar potential of Nome, Alaska. Good sunlight hours are determined by many factors.

Bottom line: San Francisco is a great spot for solar and the city’s new initiative is an amazing step in the right direction.

We hope this information helps clear things up!

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People using the Sungevity service are smart and have great foresight. We know this because, in a recent online survey we conducted, when asked what the main motive was in making a decision to go solar 57% of our respondents listed rising electricity prices as their top concern. The runner up was an interest in the environmental benefits of being your own power source without creating pollution.

With the recent news that PG&E in the Bay Area (our local utility) is seeking to raise its prices 6.5%, and gas and coal-fuel prices going through the roof, solar is a better and better power option.

In condcting this survey, we also asked people who were beyond our service territory what they’d like us to do to make going solar easier for them. Many people said they’d wait for Sungevity to reach them to go solar. We aim to get to you as quick as we can with new business capabilities spreading south from the Bay Area in California. We’ll hopefully cover the state within months. We also asked if people wanted us to refer them to another installer, and for those who answered yes, we are figuring out how to do this making while making sure we refer you to good, qualified installers.

People indicated they had been interested in solar for more than a year. We’d like to say, keep at it! The solar industry is really getting going in the US, and every installation is crucial. While we at Sungevity like to talk about getting returns on a solar investment between 10-20% (or higher), we deeply believe that this is an amazing opportunity for individuals to fight climate change, become their own power source, and improve the environment in a meaningful way.

Shine on,

The Sungevity Team

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Great news from yesterday, June 10th for SF residents:

San Francisco City Council passed by 8 - 3 an extended package of rebates for customers going solar in that wonderful city. We will be publishing more to our customers in that community in coming days to explain how they can tap it. In brief this rebate, on top of the California Solar Initiative, makes the economics of going solar in San Francisco the best in the US. Here’s an Earth2Tech blog that explains the SF Program.

Unfortunately, the bad news is that the Congress failed (again) yesterday to extend crucial tax credits to those who install solar. These tax credits are set to expire in January of 2009. Here’s hoping for a better bill to be passed in the remaining six months!

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This past weekend, Sungevity kicked off the first “Solarbration” - house parties we’ll have to mark the installation of new home solar electric systems.

While the name may or may not stick, for us, it wasn’t just about installing systems, but about the creation of a glowing feeling of community. How in the current economic climate can we create community around something like solar? We need both political and civic support in this effort, and Sungevity sends out a huge thanks to the two wonderful families, Tanya and Martina and the wonderful Paul and Bonnie, who hosted open-house barbecues and got this going.

This past Sunday, a whole extended neighborhood turned out to celebrate the efforts of their peers to go solar and do something positive for their greater global community. Our newest customers and Sungevity staffers were there to answer questions about the benefits and features of the home solar systems.

Sungevity aims to host this type of event with our customers to congratulate them on their ability to literally buy into a better world, to put their purchasing power behind a green project and see the benefits both to their finances and the environment. We look forward to hosting many more Solarbrations as we get closer to July 4th, Energy Independence Day. If you’d be interested in participating, please give us a call or an email. This is one small step for us as a company and just one step of many needed to secure our energy future and commit to a solar future for our global neighborhood.

Shine on,

DannyK

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My Aussie mother sent me a funny joke about a not so funny subject. She got it from her sister who lives in France. Seems like everyone is finally realizing that global warming is actually happening. Now let’s skip ahead to where people take action!

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Last night I had the privilege of attending a great event at the Oakland Museum of California “reporting back on the Dream Reborn Conference” in Memphis, TN on April 4th; the 40th Anniversary of the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. The theme of the conference was around building a green economy across America strong enough to lift people out of poverty while protecting the planet.

The report back was full of inspiring stories about clean energy companies collaborating with communities around the USA to train and employ people in meaningful careers; rewiring America, retrofitting buildings to be energy efficient and installing solar panels. Sungevity was proud to be one of the corporate sponsors of the event. This great video captures some of the mood of the moment:

I wasn’t in Memphis but I got just as excited at the event in Oakland last night about the huge potential of this movement for meaningful careers and green collar jobs (check out the pic of me speaking below). The subtitle of the event was “Building the Movement in California” for green jobs not jails. There was lots of great information from Green for All, a national campaign pushing Washington to support green workforce development; and the Ella Baker Center.

We have worked with this organization’s Green Collar Jobs Campaign since last year and proudly sit on the Oakland Green Employer Workforce Council, which is helping Oakland (and hopefully Richmond, Berkeley and Emeryville that make up the Clean Tech Corridor) develop training programs for the clean energy industry.

Another awesome organization featured at last nights event is Solar Richmond, whose trainees we hope to have on roofs from this July as part of their program. Long-term we’d like to see a Solar Danville, Solar Fresno and Solar San Bernadino. Ultimately we’d love to be supporting and providing work to people coming through training programs by groups like these across the country. That’s our Dream.

Shine on, dannyk.

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After my post yesterday, I was reminded of one of the questions we get about whether or not solar electric systems work in the US.

What we hear a lot is, “I don’t know if my city/ state/ place doesn’t get enough sunlight”.

The truth is all of the USA gets more than enough sunlight to make solar electricity. We have more than the best: Germany is home to about half of the solar electric systems in th world  (in comparison, the US has very little). This is true despite the fact that Germany has the solar potential of a cloudy northern state like Maine (Maine, no offense).

This has very little to do with whether solar works best there, and a lot to do with the political will in Germany to support the solar industry and some really cool companies, like Solon, who took initiative (and made the cool short video in last post). Sungevity is all about taking initiative to get the solar revolution started here…movies might take us some time but we have this blog…

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I was talking to someone on the weekend about the potential of solar power and reminded of this awesome short film from our friends at Solon (in the interest of full disclosure this German company invested in us).

The conversation always goes the same way, which is:

1. Is there enough solar power to make a difference?
2. Do solar systems survive all kinds of weather?
3. What’s the evidence the technology will last?

The answers are yes, yes, and how about the following: Worldwide, home solar systems power 1 million families’ houses. Or take our communication infrastructure that depends increasingly on solar power - whether it is satellites powered with solar arms or the ubiquitous repeaters and telecommunications towers - and has done now for decades. The reality is that this is a bomber business with a great core technology.

Please spread the link to Hail above to help people understand that fact, but let ‘em know they can get their sunshine online!

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Month one for Sungevity has been full. Our terrific team has achieved a lot - hundreds of interactive quotes sent out to customers to understand their solar options and half a dozen installs. When we look back on this time, the greatest achievement may well have been the first sale of a solar electric system to a customer entirely over the Internet!
Special note: We were a bit surprised when the first customer to buy a system entirely online and without ever talking to us was 85 years old. And there we’d thought we’d be selling to the technorati…turns out the technorati can be fabulous octogenarians.

As busy as we have been, the next month will likely be even busier. We expect more and more people to come to Sungevity.com to receive their free iQuote. If you are reading this, please pass the web site on to a friend who may not yet have heard of the opportunity to get their sunshine online – especially in California. We will be serving Marin to Livermore to San Jose as of mid June.

Our current initiative is to celebrate July 4th as Energy Independence Day…by installing solar! We’ll be out and about in San Ramon on the 4th, helping to get the word out about solar.

Here at Sungevity, we always like to keep the larger picture in mind. We need more than just individuals going solar–we need to get our politicians to support the solar industry as a solution to climate change. Looking at the landscape in the real world, the next month is going to be a big one for solar.
• The US Senate is considering a bill brought forward by the House that would extend the Federal tax credit on solar.
This is a critical incentive to support the industry – if it does not pass we fear that much of the new investment in the space will stop and many of the forecast green jobs will not be created.

Last Wednesday, the House of Representatives approved H.R. 6049, the Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008 by a vote of 263-160. The bill provides a six-year extension for both the commercial and residential Industry Tax Credit. The bill also raises the residential Industry Tax Credit from $2,000 to $4,000 – something that will help continue to make solar affordable for even more homeowners.

The Senate will take this bill up after the Memorial Day recess (they are out of session until June 2). The White House has already issued a Statement on Administration Policy suggesting a veto on H.R. 6049. The Senate will likely make several significant modifications in order to pass the bill and ensure White House acceptance.

Not a lot has happened in the last decade on this front, and Americans are the worse for it. We’re feeling the pain at the gas pump and in our energy bills and we turn on our air conditions to combat the summer heat. The rest of the world has started to cap carbon emissions and promote clean energy. Germany (a country with the solar potential of cloudy Maine) is host to more than 50% of the world’s solar installations…
At this time, the most important thing we can do is let our representatives know that we care and that we are watching their progress. We’ll keep you posted on this issue. Let’s provide solar energy to power that light at the end of this tunnel. Shine on!

Resources:

SEIA http://www.seia.org/breakingnews.php

VoteSolar www.votesolar.org

Green for All http://www.greenforall.org/resources

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