Sure, they save you money on electricity and give you lots of green karma, but what good are your solar panels when you sell your house?

According to the U.S. Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, recent tracking of home sales indicates that solar homes sell twice as fast.  That’s because 91% of home buyers in California say energy efficiency is an important consideration, and 81% understand that a home solar system will lower their electric bills.  (We’re working to make that 81% grow to 100%).

But wait, there’s more:  For every dollar in annual utility bill savings, your solar home’s value increases by $20.  So let’s say you’re a typical Sungevity customer with a home worth $300,000 who saves $800 a year on electricity….Bam!  Your home is suddenly worth $16,000 more (a 5.3% increase in value) and you’ve recouped the out-of-pocket (post-rebate) cost of installing the system.  I vowed to stop using the expression “no brainer” because, in the political arena, it seems to to coincide with “non-starter”, but how else to characterize a homeowner’s decision to go solar when the math is so clear.

Heads up realtors:  Download this snazzy GoSolar brochure to help persuade your home buying clients to invest in solar.

–Erica Etelson

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.

One of these days Congress is going to try to pass some kind of climate bill, and the word around the Beltway is that politicians with ties to the fossil fuel industry will dig their heels deep into the earth’s crust to eviscerate it.  In other words, if you think the health care brawl was tough, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet (and remember, the Senate passed the health care bill back when it had a filibuster-proof majority).

The climate bill/international treaty we need to stop catastrophic global warming is one that rapidly brings atmospheric carbon levels down to 350 ppm.  But the numbers floating around the Hill are more in the neighborhood of 450 ppm or no upward limit at all.  Legislating 350 ppm is the climate equivalent of a single payer health insurance system-it’s what the experts say we need and the pundits say is a political non-starter.

So if we don’t get the climate bill we need, where does that leave us?  It leaves us at the mercy of private industry (just like the health care bill leaves our well-being in the hands of private insurers).  Having just watched Capitalism: A Love Story, that proposition strikes me as pretty grim indeed.   On the other hand, there are some businesses (and we like to think Sungevity is one of them) that are deeply committed to selling goods and services that help people and businesses reduce their carbon footprints, and there’s not a climate skeptic in the world who can stop us.

By bringing solar down to a price that any homeowner can afford, solar companies are driving nothing less than a renewable electricity revolution.  If the government won’t do it, and the utilities won’t do it, we will…with your help. Become a solar evangelist by telling everyone you know about your solar lease, and help homeowners outside of California find local installers or PACE programs that offer assistance with financing.

Solar power alone won’t get us to 350.  But in conjunction with wind power, energy and fuel efficiency, and whatever climate bill or treaty does eventually pass, solar will be a big part of the solution.

For the rest of this week, I’ll be blogging on the theme of why we need a solar revolution–even the phytoplankton agree, as we’ll see in tomorrow’s post.

–Erica Etelson

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.

• The Solar Lease:  A straightforward lease, like leasing a car-you make monthly payments and, at the end of the lease period, have the option of buying the system at fair market value, upgrading to a new system or renewing the lease.  At the outset of the lease, some companies (not Sungevity) require a down payment.  Under the terms of the lease, the amount of power your system generates is guaranteed.
• Power Purchase Agreement (PPA):  A PPA works like a lease but with one small difference:  Instead of guaranteeing how much power your system produces, the PPA bases your monthly payment on the amount of power your system produces.

As you can see, there’s not a whole lot of difference between a solar lease and a PPA.  Under either type of financing agreement, you’ll want to look carefully at the following details which differ depending on the installer:

1. Is a down payment required?  How much?
2. Does the monthly payment increase over time?  How much?
3. How long is the lease period?
4. What are your options when the lease expires?  (Most leases and PPAs provide some mechanism for buying out the system or transferring it to the new owner).
5. What services are offered with the system?  Make sure to ask about monitoring, maintenance, insurance and repairs.

What about PACE (Property-Assessed Clean Energy)?

PACE is an exciting development for consumers in areas of the country that are not serviced by installers who offer lease financing or PPAs.  If you participate in a PACE program, here’s how it works:  Using municipal bond revenues and federal stimulus dollars, your city or county pays for your system to be installed.  You pay the system off over time (usually 20 years) through an assessment on your property tax bill.  If you sell your home, the new owner must continue paying off the system.

PACE works a little differently in every municipality and, in many areas, the programs aren’t up and running yet.  You can keep track of PACE developments in your area at pacefinancing.org.

Heads up San Francisco residents, you can use PACE to finance energy-efficiency and water conservation improvements, such as low-flow toilets, solar hot water heaters and insulation.

Now that you’re an expert on solar financing, share your wisdom with your friends and neighbors-there’s a solar financing mechanism out there for everyone!

-Erica Etelson

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.