One Block of the Grid is a competition in San Francisco to see which district can get the most San Franciscans to commit to getting solar energy on their homes, and they officially launch today, on the heels of the San Francisco Solar Incentive Program’s passage yesterday.

The winning team will get heavily subsidized (possibly free) solar energy systems by a corporate sponsor, and the other teams still win because by going solar in the same area at the same time, the installer saves money and passes those savings onto the consumer.

It’s a great way to blast through the early adoption phase for solar energy here in San Francisco, which lags behinds it’s neighbors in solar installs, mostly because of its heavy density of renters (Although Tom Price and I are going to change that)

I hope to be performing some of 1BOG’s installations; and I’m excited that knowing from my personal experience, the visibility of interest (below) this provides is going to help these guys overcome the main hurdle to early adoption: skepticism.   Note, it’s called 1BOG, not ibog.

::gmap(“blah”, “”)::

(notice I’ve moved the timestamp on this article back a month to keep it off our front page, but the competition just started 5/1/08, and the winner will be selected 5/18/08)

UPDATE:  winner, Rudy Pena.  Thanks to all who contributed very very much.

A while back we did this logo competition to come up with the solarpowerrocks.com logo. We really liked what we got. Now I want to create a local pilot project for community purchasing of solar energy and I need a new logo.

Basically it’s like this: you get people to champion their neighborhood and try to find other people in their hood who are interested in getting solar energy as well. If you get a bunch of people together to go solar at the same time, and it saves a ton of money for the installer. The installer can then pass those savings onto the costumer.

We’re calling it “United For Solar” or something to that effect. Currently I’m thinking something like a sun where the rays are people holding hands…but that’s just an idea. If you know anyone on Fark.com or some other graphic design meeting place, please post this link there. Thank you in advance.

Upload it here, we’ll post it as soon as we get it in this thread along with your name. The winner gets the iPod Touch above, and will be credited in a post on this site with a picture of you if you’d like.

What’s up, INTERNETS!? We had so much success with our Logo competition that we’re offering another competition… An article writing competition.

We want people to put solar power systems on their homes and businesses so less greenhouse gas is pumped into the atmosphere and the ice-caps don’t melt and I don’t have to move out of my sweet, sea-level San Francisco apartment… YES! YOU FIGURED IT OUT, this website is all an elaborate attempt to avoid moving (via boat).

We hope that educating the public will lead to them buying solar power…. So what’s wrong with that? Well, problem is that it’s FREAKING BORING. Do people from digg.com or stumbleupon.com come here to read about how photovoltaics work? NO! They want pop culture… They want Chris Cooper and Britney Spears coochie shots… They want videos of dogs on skateboards and pictures of things blowing up. We don’t have that.

So that’s where you come in. Do something good. Write a clever article that gets social networking traction.. something that floods our site with a blast of people who come to see boobs or celecbrity gossip that is in some way solar power related…. and have those people stay to read a few articles about how solar power systems can stick enough cash in your wallet in 30 years to put your kids through college. It’s innanet bait-and-switch, yo! What’s the prize this time? Another damn iPod Nano!!!
Here’s how it works:
You write an article and email it to us. If it’s good, we’ll at some point publish it on our site. The first person to submit an article that lands on the front page of digg.com wins the nano. Here are some other points:

• The winner will probably have the option of writing more articles for us in exchange for money, as will some of the non-winners.
• We get the rights to any article you submit to the competition and are free to do whatever we want with it. Change it, post it, or put ketchup on it and eat it. Hopefully because of your writing… some dude or chick somewhere gets solar power installed on their house, and everyone wins. That’s the whole point of this.
• The article must be your own… You must have generated it. It cannot be a reproduction or plagiarized version of anything else out there on the web.
• The nano, just like the logo competition, is one of the cuter shorter fatter ones that also does video.
• The article needs to be about solar power…. or well, man it’s gotta be at least loosely related to solar power.

Ain’t the new iPod Nano the cutest damn thing you ever did see?! I just want to eat it.

Solar Power Rocks needs a logo!

We’re giving away this new 8-gig iPod Nano to the person who comes up with the best logo idea, plain and simple. Here’s how the competition works:

It starts today. Start submitting ideas now and we’ll pick a winner at noon on Nov 15th.

You can submit either a written idea for a logo, or an image of that idea. Post the idea or the picture in the comments. You also may email them to us (dave AT solarpowerrocks.com) and we’ll append this blog post.

Some important details:

1. If someone submits a duplicate idea, we’ll go with the first one submitted.
2. If someone submits a written idea and someone else posts an image of that idea that we decide to go with, we’ll pick the image for the win.
3. Here’s the messy one, ready?: Say someone posts a written idea and someone else later posts an image of that idea. However, if we decide we like the written concept and make our own image reflecting it, we will pick the original written idea for the win.
4. You don’t have to post your idea to win… If you don’t want the world to see it, just me, let me know when you submit it and I will not post to the thread. you still can win, and your time of submission still counts. However, if it’s good enough to win I can’t imagine not wanting to post it.

Confused yet? Hopefully that’s pretty clear.

Things to think about… Our mission: to prove that solar power in many states is a smart money move… Why does solar power rock? What would make you laugh or smile if you saw it on a T-shirt?

Good luck!

• Time of submission takes priority. What this means is that if you submit an idea now, and someone submits the same idea later, your idea, if chosen, would win.

First Email Idea is in (10/31/07 11:46 AM) from S.E. :

Idea1:You could try a rock-like sun flexing its rock-like muscles, the sun would look kinda like The Thing from the Fantastic 4 comics.

Idea2:Or just one a big rock, that glows with light and “Solar Power” is written on it.

I’m sure some more will come to me, if you want I could sketch them a bit, I am somewhat of a beginning illustrator and I say beginning because i mostly suck at it but I really enjoy drawing.

Second Email Idea is in (11/3/07 11:46 AM) from C T :

Third Email Idea is in (11/3/07 11:46 AM) from Amy:

Fourth Email Idea is in (11/4/07 ) from R B:

Fifth Email Idea is in (11/4/07 ) from MY MOM (thanks, mom) (no, she will not be getting preferential treatment):

Sixth Email Idea is in (11/4/07 ) from J B:

Seventh Email Idea is in (11/4/07 ) from D P:

From the comments below:

From A.D.:

From A.M:

We have a competition with a friend’s blog to see who can get the most RSS subscribers in a month. He writes all about email. That’s right, email. We have to beat him. So, we’re offering some prizes. If you subscribe to our blog, you may be picked at random to receive either a solar powered vibrator or a solar power rocks! T-shirt. (DH – “Dave you really think somebody will want a T-Shirt we haven’t designed yet?” DL – “Hell yeah, it’s gonna be awesome”). We’re giving away 3 vibrators and 50 T-shirts. We haven’t got many subscribers yet, so your odds are looking pretty good at getting something! Also, if you email us an innovative idea that we employ to attract 1000 subscribers, we’ll give you a solar powered backpack, worth $249!

<——–click on it to see all the cool things it can do!

Last but not least, after you subscribe to our RSS feed, email me if you live in the bay area (Dave AT solarpowerrocks.com) or email Dan if you live in shouting distance of Portland OR (Dan AT solarpowerrocks.com). Why? You will be randomly selected to pie us in the face with a pie flavor of our choosing (I’ll just tell you right now, mine is lemon meringue). We’ll also post a video of you smothering us with pie for all to see. Enjoy, and please forward this to your friends. The competition begins NOW (oct 26th 2:31 PM pacific time) and ends Nov 16th at midnight!