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Local event to raise awareness about home solar systems and the environment

PALO ALTO, Calif., July 22 /PRNewswire/ — The Sierra Club today announced “The Truth About Solar,” a green home technology workshop designed to teach local homeowners about residential rooftop solar energy. This is the second in a series of Green Home Workshops the Sierra Club is offering free to the public. Danny Kennedy, Sungevity founder and 12-year veteran of Greenpeace, will lead the discussion.

The workshop is designed to teach homeowners about solar and the environment and help them decide whether solar is right for their homes. Topics such as calculating installation costs, energy savings and carbon footprint reduction will be covered. Solar system financing programs like the no money down solar lease will be covered along with programs that are available from the government in the form of rebates and incentives.

“Solar energy is a critical part of America’s drive toward energy independence,” said Larry Reed, chapter director of the Sierra Club’s Loma Prieta chapter. “It is a renewable resource that reduces home energy bills while being good for the environment.”

Danny started his work with Greenpeace in the 1990s where he worked to protect a fragile ecosystem in Africa from an oil project. He has worked as an activist for his entire career to protect the environment and encourage renewable sources of energy. Danny’s interest in solar began in the late 90s, when he worked on campaigns and helped to pass legislation supporting solar initiatives in California and in 2007, Danny founded Sungevity with the idea in mind to make solar powered homes a reality in the US.

“We have helped over 500 homeowners in California, Arizona and Colorado install solar systems and we understand the complexities they face when deciding how they can create energy efficient homes,” said Danny Kennedy, founder of Sungevity. “The great thing about residential solar today is that the technology has come a long way and power can be generated for less than $.20 per Kilowatt Hour and with finance programs that offer no money down leases, homeowners that decide to go solar can start saving money on energy bills immediately.”

Event Details

When: Tuesday, July 27th at 7:00 p.m.

Where: Belmont Library – 1110 Alameda de las Pulgas

Cost: Free- all are welcome

More info: http://greenhometechnology.wordpress.com/

About The Sierra Club, Loma Prieta Chapter

The Sierra Club, Loma Prieta Chapter is a multifaceted outdoor recreation and advocacy organization. The chapter advocates for policies that protect the natural environment, supports environmental candidates for public office and provides opportunities for people who want to develop leadership skills to give back to their communities. It serves San Mateo, Santa Clara and San Benito counties. The chapter’s Black Mountain Group is spearheading the Green Home Technology Workshops.

About Sungevity
Sungevity has designed a unique online sales process to make it easy and affordable for homeowners to go solar. Sungevity’s Solar Lease offer gives most customers savings from the start. For many the electricity bill savings start immediately and increase over time. Sungevity has an easy online “iQuote” process, which enables Sungevity to use satellite images and aerial photography to assess customers’ roofs remotely and accurately determine the homes’ solar potential. This allows the company to furnish thousands of customers with a firm proposal to use solar power with no capital cost within 24 hours.

“At first glance, going solar can seem like a no-brainer, especially if you live in a solar-friendly state like California or Arizona. Residential solar panels not only drastically reduce your carbon footprint, they can also trim your electricity bill to a fraction of its pre-solar total. Who wouldn’t consider making the leap? Well, for starters, people who don’t have an extra $30,000 lying around to make the initial investment–the average cost of a residential solar system. But solar leasing, a new way to finance those Earth-friendly panels, is making going green a whole lot more affordable.”

Read the rest of today’s Idea at the Atlantic.com

One of the most common concerns I run across when I talk to folks about solar is “What about my Homeowners’ Association? I don’t think they’ll allow me to install solar.” With something like 60 million Americans living in 305,000 association-governed communities, it’s no wonder this comes up all the time.

For lots of folks, solar panels represent progress, however, other folks only think that the panels are an eyesore. This has caused some associations to try and block the installation of solar panels on homes.  Luckily, several states including CA and AZ have laws on the books that restrict Homeowners’ Associations from halting solar progress.

So, if you are considering home solar (which hopefully you are) and are concerned about a Homeowners’ Association, fear not, you should be all set.

-Nat Smith

“An awesome Bay Area non-profit is Grid Alternatives, which is holding its annual Solarthon on July 31st. I reckon you, that’s right, YOU, should get involved…

“Grid” (as they are known) installs solar electric systems for low-income families across California, saving those families money with the zero pollution solution of solar. What’s extra cool is that they do most of these installs with volunteers, so exposing all sorts of people to solar technologies and doing a lot of job preparation for the clean economy at the same time.”

Read the rest of Danny’s post on SF Gate’s City Brights!

After you go solar, you are going to sign up for a Net Metering program. When you do that you are given electricity-pricing options.  If you are a PG&E customer, the two most common plans are called E-1 and E-6.

E-1 is also known as the “Standard Pricing Plan.” For most electricity users, this is probably what you are currently on. In this plan, the cost of electricity does not vary by time or season.

E-6 on the other hand is called the “Time-of-Use Pricing Plan.” This plan provides pricing per kilowatt-hour based on the season and time of day that the electricity is used. During peak hours (see graphic below) the user pays more for their electricity. This sort of plan makes sense for people who work and aren’t home during the day, as electricity in off peak hours (evening/morning), is cheaper than in the standard E-1 plan.

As you can see, going solar not only helps you save money and help the environment, it gives you much more control over your energy use. Hopefully this has been helpful.

-Nat Smith

Sungevity is unique in many ways, but one of the most unique aspects is our Remote Solar Design (RSD) team. I know they have been in the news recently, but it’s a really cool concept and I’m going to go ahead and add to the buzz surrounding the team.

For years going solar has been an expensive process and one of the first costs that the homeowner faces is the initial site visit for a quote. You’ve got to figure that you, as a potential customer, are going to look up a few different solar companies in the Yellow Pages (or on Google) and request an evaluation of your home’s potential. Each of the companies you contact needs to send a salesperson to your home and that process takes a lot of time: driving to who knows where, climbing up on the roof, measuring, calculating and finally presenting their plan.  This is all fine and dandy if the sales call results in a sale, but remember, you’ve called more than one company! In California, the historic conversion rate to a sale is about 10%. That leaves a lot of companies not closing a sale after a costly site visit. Guess who picks that bill up? That’s right, you, the customer.

That was Solar 1.0.  Solar 2.0 (the Sungevity way) breaks away from this cumbersome and expensive model. What we do is completely web based and designed to make going solar as cheap and easy as humanly possible. In Solar 2.0, when a potential customer wants a quote, all they have to do is go onto Sungevity’s website and submit a request for an iQuote. That’s where our RSD team comes in.

When you request your iQuote, you will see an aerial image of your neighborhood that you use to identify your home. The RSD team uses similar aerial and satellite images which enable them to solve for roof angles/orientation, see details on your roof such as vents, as well as determine size and shading. With these images the RSD team can design a system for your home incredibly quick and cost-effective manner.

Once the RSD team designs your virtual solar array, they email you a firm quote. The beauty of the RSD method is that we are able to deliver firm quotes within 24 hours (an unprecedented accomplishment) and save a ton of money which we can pass on to our customers.

-Nat Smith

Part three of Danny’s Smart Grid series is up on SF Gate’s City Brights.

“The last thing that I’ll say about the emerging “smart grid” for now is that it not only requires support and political will; it not only needs all the brains in the Bay Area to engage in building cool tools to make it real; but it needs engaged consumers. This may be the missing piece in the phenomenon gripping electricity grids…”

Check out part 2 of Danny’s Smart Grid series on SF Gate’s City Brights.

“The difference between the 20th century’s electricity grid and the 21st century’s “Smart Grid” is data and how it is used to manage energy services. Think what an opportunity that represents for the knowledge workers of the Bay Area!”

The process of buying and selling solar involves lots of people. However, one of the most integral steps is the actual installation. At Sungevity, we utilize our Preferred Installer Network (PIN). Our PIN is made up of a group of highly trained, highly experienced and well-established solar installers and contractors. To join the PIN, installers must have passed Sungevity’s rigorous quality controls and adopted Sungevity’s proven installation practices and techniques.

Essentially, what Sungevity has accomplished with the creation of the PIN is to create a widespread network of extremely capable solar installers with local knowledge. Having your installers be part of a local crew means that they are familiar with any local issues and that when the install is complete, they aren’t going to simply vanish. Instead your PIN crew will remain a viable element of the solar community ready to help both you and your friends.

For me, one of the greatest parts of the PIN is that it is proof of the emergence of the green-collar economy. A Pew Institute study reported that the clean energy economy is growing robustly. Between 1998 and 2007, the clean energy economy grew at a rate of 9.1 percent, which is impressive when you look at it in the context of the traditional job market, which grew by only 3.7 percent during that same time period.

So how do these jobs play out in the solar industry? According to the Solar Living Institute, every megawatt of solar installed in the United States employs 10 people for a year. At the rate solar is currently being installed, that is a lot of jobs being created!

-Nat Smith

SF Green/The Thin Green Line, the San Francisco Chronicle’s community page for environmental issues, plugged our new home solar lease today.  You can read the post, “Paying for Clean Energy Just Got Easier” here.

We’re thrilled to see our local news organizations recognize that new financing mechanisms like the solar lease are game changers in the world of distributed solar power generation.  The more homeowners understand how easy and affordable it is to go solar now, the more the solar industry will continue to grow and kick some coal n’ nuclear booty.