This week The Bogman heads to Phoenix to offer 1 Block off the Grid solar discounts for neighbors who go solar together. And what better city to go to! Phoenix was super hard-hit by the housing crisis. It has had 54% drops in property values, some of the worst in the nation.

So this may not seem like just the perfect time for Phoenix (including including Glendale, Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa) to go solar. But, there’s one thing that Phoenix residents should know: Solar raises property values!

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If you do solar estimates in Berkeley, you start feeling left out that you don’t estimate solar roofs in San Diego. Rebates for our whole state are decided based on optimum solar conditions. That optimal spot? Southern California.

So if you go solar in Berkeley and install the exact same kilowatts-worth of solar panels as someone in San Diego, you won’t get as good a state rebate from your utility.  They just have better sun down there, and it’s the standard by which all other sun is judged—at least by the California Solar Initiative’s Expected Performance Ratings.

We’ve made up for that by inventing new ways to lower solar costs—like One Block off the Grid (1BOG)— which aggregates homeowners into groups to reduce solar costs.

But now our own San Francisco-based 1BOG is taking aggregated solar purchasing to sun drenched Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Desert Hot Springs and Coachella - the very places that already qualify for the best rebates per kilowatt in the state!

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Sonoma County at this point has the largest municipal financing program for solar and energy efficiency, modeled after the Berkeley First program, but run by the city themselves instead of a program administrator. The program allocated $100M and they’ve burned through about $20M of it in a very short period of time, since this is peoples’ favorite flavor of financing for solar.

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One Block Off the Grid is the nation’s largest and fastest growing community purchasing group for residential solar, and was founded to cause the tipping point in its adoption.  Grouping people together to make bulk purchases has lowered the upfront cost, as well as streamlined the oftentimes-complicated process of solar installation.  This bulk-purchasing model is widely applicable, and in the process of engaging people on the topic of solar, it became clear that the power of community-based bulk purchasing could and should be applied to other services as well.  Home performance retrofitting, sometimes referred to as weatherization, was an obvious choice.

1BOG has partnered with its first non-PV integrator to offer Bay Area residents a steep discount on home performance retrofits.  Home performance retrofitting can help eliminate wasted energy, and make your home a more comfortable place to live.  Leaky windows and ducts mean that temperature control is more difficult than it needs to be.  Home performance retrofits solve this.  Mold and dampness make air quality indoors three to five times worse than air quality outdoors.  Home performance retrofits solve this.

By partnering with Sustainable Spaces, the Bay Area’s leading provider of these services, 1BOG is able to offer a 15% discount on all retrofitting work done.  Sure, home performance retrofitting isn’t free, but when you take into consideration that you can begin saving up to 40% on your energy bills (gas and electric), the value of this service becomes clear.  Regardless of age, location, shading, etc., chances are your home, your family, and your wallet can all benefit from a home performance retrofit through 1BOG and Sustainable Spaces.

For more information, visit 1BOG at: http://1bog.org/home-energy-efficiency-from-1bog/

1BOG and GO Media are both powered by Virgance.

So we have all heard by now that Google is getting into the power management game, Cisco and IBM are coming to play too, but are the mega-stars of the VC and IT worlds going to be creating the new terms of energy management, or will local management solutions be more effective as the method for some markets? The easy answer is that it depends. Local grids can be made up of energy generation near recipient towns, cities or villages, just as energy can travel from another portion of a state or country, but increasingly there will be local power generation which will need to be brought intelligently to local customers on a block by block or building by building scale. ‘Micro-grids’ as they have come to be known, will likely serve most readily and immediately rural populations, who will bypass the need for state-electrification and develop power-management systems on their own because it is easier to implement than waiting for infrastructure build-out.

Many of the major players in the space have been basing their assumptions for growth not upon this notion, but upon a Western model of electrification. While the hardware developed by major California smart grid firms such as Trilliant and Silver Springs Networks will rightfully be applied toward the lucrative state or utility scale projects, these projects will only deal with the needs existing within the existing grid framework. The growth of the space will need innovation in power-management for those who either do not currently have access to an electrical grid or those who can benefit from opting-out of one altogether.

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The whole thing is happening without flashy ad campaigns, so it’s not surprising if you’ve never heard of municipal solar financing. But the financing program, also known as property tax financing, is a veritable underground solar revolution.

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Solar group purchasing program 1 Block Off the Grid (1BOG) just launched a new campaign in New Orleans.

1BOG works by grouping customers together into a sort of buying club. Then, after a rigorous selection process, they choose a solar installer who will provide the biggest discount and the best quality. The more people that sign up, the better the discount for anyone buying solar through the program.

If you aren’t familiar with 1 Block Off the Grid, what they do may be best explained by New York Times Magazine:

…in a cultural moment when many individuals aren’t feeling all that rugged, perhaps it makes sense that a company called 1BOG has put collective buying at the center of its business model. The name is derived from the phrase “one block off the grid,” a reference to the goal of rounding up groups of homeowners willing to install solar-power systems on their houses — removing the rough equivalent of one block from a city’s electrical grid.

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1 Block Off the Grid, the low-cost solar group-purchasing program, just launched a new campaign in San Diego.

1BOG expects to choose a solar installer around April 18th, and have them evaluting homes by the end of the month. The more people that sign up, the better the discount for anyone buying solar through the program.

If you aren’t familiar with 1 Block Off the Grid, what they do may be best explained by today’s article in New York Times Magazine:

…in a cultural moment when many individuals aren’t feeling all that rugged, perhaps it makes sense that a company called 1BOG has put collective buying at the center of its business model. The name is derived from the phrase “one block off the grid,” a reference to the goal of rounding up groups of homeowners willing to install solar-power systems on their houses — removing the rough equivalent of one block from a city’s electrical grid.

If you’re looking for solar in San Diego and want to get involved, check out their website. 1BOG has gone to great lengths to help spread the word, so don’t forget to check out the volunteer kit.

Disclaimer: Both 1BOG and GO Media (aka this blog) are owned by activism startup Virgance. Don’t worry though - we’re an independent media arm and we wouldn’t be telling you about this if we didn’t think it was a great program. Read more about us here.

The largest stimulus package in US history was signed today, and it’s putting a smile on the face of the solar industry. President Obama returned to Denver, where he accepted the Democratic nomination, to sign this landmark legislation–this time in front of solar panels, not neoclassical pillars.

“I don’t want to pretend that today marks the end of our economic problems,” Obama said before signing the bill. “We are laying the groundwork for a green energy economy that can create countless green jobs. We will transform the way we use energy.”

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The English language has a wonderful way of evolving with major or minor events in the economic, social and political history of man. Following the release of words like “Mompreneur” and “Ecopreneur”, the latest buzzword that is floating around the business and economic sphere is “Obamapreneur.” While it is clear that all “Preneur” roads lead to a noble business mission but what the heck is an Obamapreneur?

President Obama is clearly the man of the moment and although running a business is not officially part of his resume, entrepreneurs are closely examining the way he has run his campaign, and now the country, to model their business strategy after his.  Barry Libert and Rick Faulk, authors of “Barack, Inc: Winning Business Lessons of the Obama Campaign” point out three lesson to entrepreneurs based upon what they have seen in President Obama’s campaign:

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After representing 20% of all solar installs in San Francisco in Q4 2008, 1Block Off the Grid (1BOG) is now bringing major solar community purchasing discounts to Los Angeles, CA.

1BOG began building its solar community in San Francisco (as depicted in the takeover of the map above). The original pilot campaign brought in 184 San Francisco residents who signed up for solar discounts from RealGoods, and 42 of them followed through to buy a system—double the normal adoption rate. The latest 1BOG campaign in the Bay Area has already brought in 1,070 sign ups, a 6x increase over the pilot. SolarCity has been selected as the installer for this round.

Definition, 1BOG: a nationwide, community-based program that organizes residents locally and negotiates group discounts with solar installers, using a comprehensive vendor selection process.

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On Saturday, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom hosted a discussion on his radio show about the “Green Collar Economy.” Appearing on the show were Van Jones, founder of Green for All and author of a new book on the topic, and Dave Llorens, founder of 1Block Off the Grid.

You can listen to the podcast here: This post contains additional media. Click here to view the full post..

Mayor Newsom’s guests had a lot to say about how the new green jobs sector of the economy is bending the corner from “inspiration to implementation”.

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“Ma’am, what’s the best way to get to your roof? We need to see where we’d put the solar panels and we don’t have a four story ladder.”

HER:   “I think this door goes out on to the roof, but I’ve never been out there.”

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When we last wrote about 1 Block Off the Grid’s(1BOG) community solar initiative in San Francisco, many of you wondered why similar programs don’t exist across the United States. Well, good news for those of you in Boston, New Orleans, Seattle, Miami, Washington, and 15 other US cities—1BOG is coming.

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Essentially, the organization uses the power of community as a bargaining chip to make solar more accessible to homeowners.

With this initial solar campaign, 1BOG was able to negotiate up to 48% off 2 kW solar systems from the market price for its participants. According to 1BOG Founder and Managing Partner Sylvia Ventura, 2 kW is the average size of a home-based solar system in San Francisco.

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