Energy News  
SolarCity Achieves California Success With Community Solar Programs

-
by Staff Writers
Foster City CA (SPX) Mar 13, 2008
SolarCity has announced that the company has successfully carried its innovative Community Solar Program across the state and to Southern California thanks to the company's group solar initiative. In just 16 months since the program's inception, the Community Solar Program has brought 2.7 megawatts of renewable energy to homeowners across the state.

SolarCity first created the Community Solar Program in 2006 as a revolutionary approach to creating financial incentives for neighborhoods that go solar together. Through economies of scale and the efficiencies realized in centralizing equipment and employees, SolarCity is offering discounts of up to 25 percent off market rates, and install systems quickly, if neighborhoods meet program goals.

SolarCity's Community Solar Program has been an effective means for instituting change on a community-level in cities and towns all across California. The program not only affords communities a faster path to energy independence and financial savings, but also a powerful means of helping reduce their carbon footprints. Statewide, the 2.7 megawatts of new solar power systems will collectively prevent the release of 2,160 tons of C02 annually -- roughly equivalent to planting nearly 60,000 trees.

The most recent program came to a close in Long Beach, where some 50 homeowners purchased a total of 175 kilowatts of clean power -- more than double the amount city residents purchased in all of 2007, and the largest number of homes to go solar in a four-month period in the city's history.

"This clearly demonstrates how SolarCity has managed to make solar more affordable to more people," said Mary Barton, who championed the Long Beach program among neighbors and purchased a system herself. "Knocking down financial barriers to adopting clean energy has helped empower our community to come together and make a real difference fighting climate change," she said.

All of SolarCity's installations come with the company's proprietary SolarGuard monitoring service, an industry-leading Internet-based monitoring system that allows the company to proactively monitor customers' system performance and provide on-demand reports for individual and community-aggregated clean-energy production and carbon dioxide offsets.

"The Community Solar Programs enable us to save and to pass that savings onto our customers," said SolarCity Founder and Chief Executive Officer Lyndon Rive. "This creates a more inclusive solar market, and an inspired one too -- as we've seen in the California program, communities who become aware of their collective power in 'being the difference' with regard to carbon reduction and energy independence will rise up with an impressive call to action," Rive noted.

Community
Email This Article
Comment On This Article

Related Links
All About Solar Energy at SolarDaily.com



Memory Foam Mattress Review
Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily
XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News


Spire Receives Order For Second Turnkey Solar Manufacturing Line To Spain's Fluitecnik
Bedford MA (SPX) Mar 13, 2008
Spire has announced it has received a contract from the solar division of Spanish renewable energy company Fluitecnik S.A., to provide a photovoltaic module assembly line for that company's operations in Portugal. Spire will provide Fluitecnik with a semi-automated crystalline module manufacturing line capable of producing up to 20 megawatts (MW) of solar modules per year for sale into the European solar marketplace.







  • Fashion designers aim to help Asian poor with eco-chic
  • Cleaner Diesels
  • Boulder, Colorado, To Be Fully Integrated Smart Electricity City
  • Biodiesel Joint Venture With Mindanao Lumad Tribes Will Bolster Community Development

  • Nuclear Power To Play Key Role In Meeting Energy And Environmental Goals
  • Bulgaria shortlists RWE, Electrabel for nuclear power plant
  • Progress Energy Florida Takes Next Step To Secure Energy Future
  • INL-led Team Achieves Nuclear Fuel Performance Milestone

  • Scientists Identify Origin Of Hiss In Upper Atmosphere
  • NASA Co-Sponsors Ocean Voyage To Probe Climate-Relevant Gases
  • Satellite Data To Deliver State-Of-The-Art Air Quality Information
  • New Model Revises Estimates Of Terrestrial Carbon Dioxide Uptake

  • Macedonia plants two million trees to revive its forests
  • Deforestation Worsening In Brazil Claims Greenpeace
  • Secrets Of Cooperation Between Trees And Fungi Revealed
  • Researcher: Wild California just a memory

  • Mediterranean tuna at risk from 'bloated' fishing fleet: WWF
  • Green group issues warning over nanotechnology in food
  • Brazilian protesters destroy GM crops: group
  • Asia nations hurting as price of rice soars

  • Daimler unveils plan to sell more buses in China, India and Russia
  • Yellow Cabs go green in US
  • GM VP Discusses Viability Of Affordable Hydrogen Infrastructure
  • Too Much Traffic Can Cause A Jam All On It's Own

  • Northrop, EADS to invest 600 mln dlrs in Alabama site
  • China air passenger traffic up 16.8 percent in 2007: state media
  • Environmentalists climb on Heathrow jet in airport protest: officials
  • NASA opens a rotary wing research project

  • Nuclear Power In Space - Part 2
  • Outside View: Nuclear future in space
  • Nuclear Power In Space

  • The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2007 - SpaceDaily.AFP and UPI Wire Stories are copyright Agence France-Presse and United Press International. ESA Portal Reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by SpaceDaily on any Web page published or hosted by SpaceDaily. Privacy Statement