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.