What has five times the ROI of solar in the desert?

Published on June 16, 2010 by Dave Llorens.
Categories: New Jersey.

Plugfoot brings tidings of new Solar Group Discounts

Published on June 15, 2010 by Dave Llorens.
Categories: Solar Trends.

Hey Y’alls, quick up date on where group purchases are now available at 1BOG:

Homeowners in Orange County, Inland Empire, Los Angeles, and the southern part of New Jersey are now the newest areas of the U.S. that now have access to a 15% group discount on home solar energy installations. The discount is offered by my other company 1BOG which helps you buy home solar by negotiating group discounts with local solar energy companies. So, 1BOG is now available to more than 23 million people, woot.

Taking the Mystery out of Solar Energy

1BOG has established installation and performance standards for its installers, which include Heliopower (Orange County and Inland Empire), Trinity Solar (Southern New Jersey), and REC Solar (Los Angeles). To see all of the details you can sign up right here on SolarPowerRocks.com.  Once signed up, you’ll see specific information on the solar panels used by each company, pricing, timeline, and your personal checklist for what it takes to go solar. After checking that out, you will be contacted to determine if your home could make a suitable site for a solar installation by using the online estimation tool. If you’re interested in moving forward, the installer will get in touch and perform a free home assessment.

If you’re not in one of these cities and you sign up, we will tell you how many people near you are signed up so we can get closer to launching a solar group purchase program there!

Very Generous Oregon Feed-in Tariff Program Set to Launch in July

Published on June 11, 2010 by Dan Hahn.
Categories: oregon.

What follows below is the story of you waking up on a Saturday morning to Jesus knocking on your door:

YOU: “Who the hell is this?”

YOU: (put on pants)

YOU: (look through the peephole)

YOU: “Jesus Christ?! Oh, man what does he want? For Christ’s sake it’s Saturday. I’m not in the mood.”

YOU: (begrudgingly open the door)

SOLAR JESUS: “Hi sorry to bother you this morning, but I thought you might like to know that since you have a nice sunny south facing roof and it appears you own this fine Oregon home, that I would be willing and happy to give you $300 a month. Is it a deal?”

YOU: “Jesus? What? It’s Saturday I was going to come into church tomorrow I swear.”

SOLAR JESUS: “No, it’s true. Check it out. If I can install solar panels on your roof, your electric company – PGE Power right?”

YOU: “Yes, PGE. Bastards keep increasing my rates”

SOLAR JESUS: “Right those same PGE bastards will cut you a check for about $300 a month if you install solar on your home. Since I am Jesus, I will deliver their tithe to you.”

YOU: “Oh? For how many months? Is this some kind of ploy to get me all geeked out about solar energy but then I’m stuck holding the bag? I don’t think I’m interested in that.”

SOLAR JESUS: “15 years, my son.”

YOU: “What?! PGE will pay me $300 a month for 15 years if I install solar? That’s like $45,000! Are you sure about that? I don’t believe you.”

SOLAR JESUS: “No it’s true. See look here.”

SOLAR JESUS: (Pulls out what appears to be a bill from downstate Salem. HB 3909 to be exact.)

SOLAR JESUS: “This program starts next month in July, but will have a cap of about 3000 Oregon homes. Can I sign you up?”

YOU: “That sounds good, however aren’t these solar energy systems expensive? How am I gonna pay for it? There’s all these cutbacks around work, the economy doesn’t seem to be getting better, I just don’t know.”

SOLAR JESUS: “Ok, Amen. But check it out. We can install a solar energy system with a 20 year warranty on your house that will eliminate $60 a month off of your electric bill. Couple that with the $300 a month PGE will pay you and you are ahead $360 a month. You with me still?”

YOU: “Yeah, that sounds simple, but you still haven’t gotten to the cost part. How much do I need to pay for that system Jesus?”

SOLAR JESUS: “Right, we can install that system for $32,500.”

YOU: “Christ.” (Begin to close the door on Solar Jesus)

SOLAR JESUS: “Wait!”

YOU: “Dude, I just told you I can’t afford to spend thousands of dollars right now. What’s there to wait more for?”

SOLAR JESUS: “I can easily get you a loan for your solar system. You’ll only have to pay $250 a month! You would immediately be saving $110 a month! Here look at this.”

SOLAR JESUS: (shows you a nifty graph as cherubs fall from the heavens)

SOLAR JESUS: “See how there’s more dollars and electricity savings every month than there is cost? It would be like me, walking by your house, over the Willamette from Nazareth and giving you 2 tickets to the Opera every month for 15 years.”

YOU: “I hate opera.”

SOLAR JESUS: “It’d be like me giving you 30 square watermelons every month at no cost to you!”

YOU: “You’re getting warmer, but what the hell am I gonna do with 30 watermelons every month?”

SOLAR JESUS: “It’d be like me walking by your house, opening your mail slot, and shoving in one hundred and ten one dollar bills every month.”

YOU: “Are you insinuating that I frequent strip clubs?”

SOLAR JESUS: “I know all, my son. Would you like $110 a month immediately or not? I’ll do all the necessary paperwork.”

YOU: “Fine.”

The above is a completely accurate representation of the Feed in Tariff recently approved by the Oregon Public Utilities commission. Calculations assume a 5kw system installed, and a loan for $30,000 amortized over 15 years at a rate of 5%. The program starts in July 2010, will be limited to 25MW, which would be gobbled up by approximately 3000 Oregon homes and small businesses in a jiffy.

If you live in Oregon, you should definitely fill out our form to get yourself into a collective buying group with our partner, One Block off the Grid. By going solar together in a group, you can wind up receiving even more than $110/month. Sign up before all the watermelons are spoken for!!!

Why do people go solar? They’ve got their elephant and rider in sync!

Published on June 8, 2010 by Dan Hahn.
Categories: solar sales.

For the past 10 weeks, I taught my first college course: “The Psychology of Personal Decision-Making”. Surprised at how quickly I was approved to teach the course on short notice, I drafted a syllabus with one lofty goal: Arm all of my students with the rational tools they needed to make their lives better when confronted with decision opportunities.

However, in piecing together our course text, videos and articles, I realized one major shortcoming which needed to be addressed: We are not robots who can piece together the best probable outcomes for events and move forward. When confronted with major decisions in our life, we are a seriously imbalanced mash-up of ration and emotion. How do you get your emotion and rationality in sync, so you can most effectively decide?

A helpful illustration comes from Jonathan Haidt, who uses the metaphor of the elephant and its rider in his bestselling Happiness Hypothesis. In this example, the rider embodies our most rational, conscious selves and the elephant symbolizes our emotion. Even the most well equipped rider with a whole bunch of analytical tools will have one hell of a time steering that elephant anywhere unless the elephant is motivated to move in the requested direction.

Same goes for us over here at SPR doing our damndest to motivate you to at least get a quote for solar energy on your home. We can and have presented you with all the facts, figures, dollars saved, and payback amounts required, and many times this pencils out to a nice solid investment. We have and will continue to impress the hell out of your rider. However, as long as your elephant is unimpressed and continuing to swat flies with its tail, you aren’t gonna do much of anything with this information.

That’s why it’s so important for us to have you focus on envisioning what going solar really means from more of an emotional perspective. Many times, to get the emotional wheels turning, it takes some sort of visual kick in the pants. It’s the same reason why many charities infiltrate our minds with disturbing images of children without cleft palates, underfed puppies, or bug-eyed Ethiopians with dual xylophones for midsections. Even if our riders are shouting from the top of the elephant, “Whoa, whoa, we can’t possibly save every puppy with this charity, we shouldn’t give them money that could be much better used somewhere else”, our elephant is already quickly hauling ass off the path, through some brush, and whacking our poor rider across the face with branches and leaves.

Solar makes incredibly logical sense in many locations of the country right now. It will just be up to us to re-engineer how you interpret the message so your elephant and rider are in sync. More to come.