Solar Buyers Group Returns to Mountain View

As explained in the story in today's Mountain View Voice, a second edition of the solar buyers group is now active in Mountain View. This year's group is being organized by former Mayor Mike Kasperzak, who purchased a solar system as part of the first group.

Dates and times for the first two public meetings are:

Wed. March 19, 7 pm, MVLA High School District Office Board Room, 1299 Bryant Ave., MV
Thur. April 3, 7 pm, the historic Adobe Building, 157 Moffett Blvd., MV

You can register for either event here: http://www.solarcity.com/tabid/133/Default.aspx

Summer Solstice Potluck

The article in today's Mountain View Voice about the Summer Solstice Potluck reminded me that I haven't posted anything here in almost a month. That's because my new job as Community Programs Marketing Manager at SolarCity has been keeping me really busy. This is my first job with a start-up, and the pace is as hectic as I've heard it would be.

Community programs like Mountain View's have become incredibly popular, and we now have them running in Berkeley/Rockridge, Castro Valley, Rocklin, San Carlos, Menlo Park/Atherton, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, and the Willow Glen/Cambrian Park/Rose Garden neighborhoods of San Jose. Oh, and there's also the Stanford program, which covers not only houses on Stanford land but also the homes of all Stanford faculty and staff within a 15 mile drive of Hoover Tower. And more to come soon! You'll find the complete list at http://www.solarcity.com/Default.aspx?tabid=137

Getting back to the subject of the potluck picnic -- it was really a wonderful evening and a great way for new solar system owners to share shop talk and ask questions of each other as well as the SolarCity employees who were there. About half a dozen installers were there along with an equal number from the marketing and management team.

Our own experience as solar owners has been going very well. We've had outstanding sunny mild weather for the last two months which is ideal for solar power production. Our 2.1 kW AC system is generating about 14.5 kWh per day, and we're only using about 10.2 kWh. The rest is being "banked" for our wintertime use, and my guess is that we will truly find a year from now that we have lowered our electricity bill to zero (except, of course, for the $5 or 6/month that PG&E charges for reading our meter and providing us with a connection to the grid).

It's a great feeling to know that our home's power is provided by free range organic photons streaming in from the sun. Instead of just heating up our shingles, they're powering our home! ;)

MV Voice Article Summarizes Success to Date

In today's issue of the Mountain View Voice, an article by Daniel DeBolt summarizes the success the Buyers Group has had to date and suggests that businesses may jump on board in the last week of the program just as homeowners did at the end of April. The link to the article is at this URL and the full article follows:

Bulk-rate solar offered to local firms
Larry's Autoworks and others expected to join by month's end
by Daniel DeBolt

While the strong support from homeowners to purchase solar energy systems has made the headlines recently, there is also a program for businesses that will end May 31.

"Federal tax credits are even juicier for commercial users," said Bruce Karney, the local resident who recently organized the 117-home group buy with Solar City.

After all federal rebates and grants are factored in, Solar City says, a system worth $574,000 would cost just $133,000. Larry Moore of Larry's Autoworks said his system would cost about $300,000 before rebates, but added that it would quickly pay for itself because the shop's electrical bill is $1,800 a month.

"We're an environmental shop," Moore said. "We are the ones who started the whole environmental shop movement several years ago. Secondly it looks like in a few years we would actually lower our electric bill — we would actually be selling power to PG&E."

Karney said that unfortunately many businesses lease or rent their property, which means the long-term investment makes little sense for them.

According to Solar City, several businesses have expressed interest in purchasing up to 72 kilowatts of solar panels. If the homebuyers program is any indication, the company might see a surge of businesses sign up before the May 31 deadline.

Solar buyers group reaches 118 homes
Recent developments have caused the electrical meters at several Mountain View homes to run backwards.

Bruce Karney is one resident happily afflicted with the problem. When his solar panels were switched on two weeks ago it was a cause for celebration. Last month he managed to convince 118 home owners (double his goal) in Mountain View to muster about $15,000 each for a bulk rate on home solar panels. All 118 systems will be up and running soon, producing 345 kilowatts of energy from the sun and preventing tons of carbon dioxide emissions yearly — 5,300 tons over the panels' 30-year lifespan to be exact. It's the equivalent to taking 1,000 cars off the road for a year, Karney said.

"I couldn't be happier with the way the program has happened in Mountain View," Karney said. "By the end of the year over 2 percent of single-family homes in Mountain View will be solar. I think that's great — to go from a really unusual thing to [a situation] where almost every home owner will know someone with a solar system."

Significant federal and state tax breaks for solar panels are expected to slowly decrease over the next few years, which is what may have motivated many of the homeowners to participate in the Solar City group buy. Karney said that in total participants saved $690,000 when figured against standard prices for solar panels. Karney expects that his system will pay for itself in 15 years.

#end#

My "Guest Opinion" Column in The Voice

The local paper, The Mountain View Voice, printed the Guest Opinion column that I submitted in its April 13, 2007 issue. Here is a link to the article: http://www.mv-voice.com/story.php?story_id=2821

The Editor, Don Frances, has been very generous in the amount of publicity he has given to the project in his weekly column, and I appreciate being able to write the 450-word opinion column.

ABC News and "Fast Company" Pick Up the Story

Today I was part of a group of about a dozen people who were photographed for an article about SolarCity and its Community Power Program that will appear in Fast Company magazine. The photo shoot was at Mary and Chris Dateo's house near Cuesta Park. Their solar system is nearly installed, and the photo included the community champions for Menlo Park and Atherton as well as Twana and me, Mary and Chris, and several Solar City employees.

{Later -- the story and photo appeared on Page 37 of the June, 2007 issue of Fast Company. Unfortunately for our 15 minutes of fame, we were cropped out of the photo. Darn!}

While waiting for the photographer to set up, Nicole from SolarCity told me that the company had been featured on Friday, April 7 in a segment of the national ABC News. I've added a link to it in the "Media" section of the blog.

I also sent in my Guest Editorial to the Mountain View Voice. It will appear this coming Friday.

Hey, I'm In the Merc + Well Attended Meeting

The interview I did with Sarah Tribble showed up in the Mercury News today (March 10), just in time to help publicize today's meeting. We had about 50-55 people in the audience. About 1/4 said they found about it through each of these routes: the Mercury-News article, the add in The Voice, the article in the OMVNA Newsletter, and via an e-mail.

There were lots of good questions from the audience again today. I'm really happy with the way Mountain View is responding to this opportunity!

There aren't any more public meetings currently scheduled, but I think it would make sense to have one more meeting in the first half of April. I'll talk with the folks at SolarCity about that next week.

Second Story in The Voice

Don Frances, the Editor of The Mountain View Voice, gave the Solar Buyers Group some really nice free publicity in his column today. He wrote:

Sunny side up

BRUCE KARNEY'S plan to bring bulk-rate solar to Mountain View — he's calling it the "Mountain View Solar Buyers Co-op" — is coming along nicely, it seems, after a huge turnout for last weekend's kickoff meeting at the Mountain View Senior Center.

"More than 220 people attended Saturday's meeting, which was more than twice as many as my most optimistic estimate," Karney wrote.

"I was particularly pleased to see individuals of all ages, from late 20s to late 70s, in the audience. It's the largest civic meeting I've been to in many years where people didn't show up because they were trying to stop a project."

Karney was inspired by the recent success of Portola Valley, which managed to strum up enough buyers — nearly twice the needed amount, in fact — to get a 30 percent discount from SolarCity, a Foster City company which installs solar arrays.

A discount of that size, Karney estimates, "brings the price of a kilowatt-hour of solar electricity down to about 10 cents — less than PG&E's lowest rate."

Not too bad. The next informational meeting will be Tuesday, Feb. 27 at 7 p.m. at the Mountain View High School Theater. For more info on the company, visit www.solarcity.com.

Great Story in the Voice

Wow, my phone call with Don Frances has really borne fruit! He gave the Solar Buyers Group a really nice write up in today's Mountain View Voice.

Here's what he wrote in his article.

Bulk rate solar
Local leads effort to hatch a deal with solar supply company
by Don Frances

Recently, dozens of property owners in Portola Valley decided to pool their numbers in an attempt to obtain solar power arrays at bulk rate. As a result, about 68 homes participated in the deal and were outfitted with power- and money-saving solar arrays — at a 30 percent discount.

Inspired by this success, local resident Bruce Karney is announcing he'd like to duplicate the idea in Mountain View, with the same solar company, and he says now is the time to strike.
Karney, a "knowledge management consultant" by trade, says the first step is to recruit as many property owners as possible to meet with the company, SolarCity, and "learn about what happened in Portola Valley." To that end, he's booked a spot at the Mountain View Senior Center for next Saturday, Feb. 10.

"SolarCity has some numbers in mind about the size of the discount they'd like to offer to the people of Mountain View," he said. According to Nicole Ratner, marketing director for SolarCity, the company is considering a similar discount for Mountain View participants — between 20 and 30 percent, depending on market rates.

In Portola Valley (and parts of neighboring Ladera), the 30 percent discount came after residents met the "threshold" amount of electricity, 175 kilowatt-hours, which SolarCity's arrays would generate. Since the average home uses about 4 kilowatt-hours, that meant roughly 44 homes were needed for SolarCity to move forward.

In the end, with the help of some local schools and other government sites, they nearly doubled that goal, Karney said. The final deal was agreed to in late December.

Now is the time for such a deal in Mountain View, according to Karney, because a tax credit for solar upgrades expires in 2007, rebates from the California Energy Commission are still worthwhile, and because "hot August days" are far enough off.

As for the threshold, Mountain View's is also set at 175 kilowatt-hours, Ratner said. Considering Mountain View's size — and the fact that this time the Foster City-based company is also courting small business owners — Ratner is hopeful the threshold will be met.

"I'd love to see it [happen]," she said. "To put Mountain View on the map."

"We started this company to bring solar to the masses," she added.

The next step, Karney said, is for interested residents to attend the meeting at the Senior Center and hear what SolarCity has to offer. At that point "the process largely shifts over to SolarCity, because they need to go out and do individual assessments," he said.

Karney imagines the next few months as a time for getting property owners on board with the idea. Sign-ups would end in April, with solar installations beginning at that time and ideally being completed sometime in July.

"Thirty percent off is enough to get most people excited no matter what it is," he said.

The meeting is in Mountain View Senior Center's Social Hall, on Saturday, Feb. 10 from 3 to 5 p.m. Karney will be there, along with SolarCity representatives and possibly some participating homeowners from Portola Valley.