One Block off the Grid Launches

Posted on June 4, 2008 by David Llorens.
Categories: Solar Trends.

1bog.org

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.


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2 comments.

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Comment on June 4th, 2008.

What an awesome project to be involved in. Now if only we could get Seattle to get on board with something like this.

Big John
Comment on June 18th, 2008.

This is all well and good, but what good does it do to install PV in a home that is not set up for normal efficiencies. I think the first thing home owners should do is get their home set up to run as efficient as possible by getting modern appliances including the Central air(if present) then adding additional insulation to the various areas around the house, IE attic, doors, windows, outlet holes, vents and more. If the city would allow rebates or tax breaks here then the money for PV installations would be more affordable, because the usage would be less and thus the number of PV’s required would be less. I feel that the subsidies are going to the wrong place without preparing the home for the real issues of usage.

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