Expert Q&As

We spoke with Lisa Max, founder of GoSolarMarin (www.gosolarmarin.com), about the next revolution in solar power.

How did this project get its start?
GoSolarMarin started when my husband and I moved down to Marin County three and a half years ago. It's very sunny here, so we decided to buy a house that could use solar power. We bought an old 50's house with a flat roof in full sun. We have a swimming pool and a hot tub, and we also use electric heat which resulted in enormous bills—some as high as $700 per month. I got a few estimates for solar, but they were also very high. I needed to find a way to get the price down. I put fliers in my neighbors' mailboxes to get the word out that we were interested in going solar. Next, I asked my neighborhood association if they would notify everyone in the neighborhood, and finally, I called the federation of neighborhood association and asked them to notify people as well. The more steps I took to get the word out, the more the whole thing snowballed. People called from all over Marin County. We had a core group of about three to five people who would come to meetings where we developed a request for a proposal to send to solar companies. It basically said, "We are a group of individual home owners who would like to go solar at the best possible price, and we would like to include as many people as possible in this group." We sent out 15 requests for proposals and got 10 of them back. From there, we narrowed it down to four companies we thought were most able to handle the job and who made the best offers. We visited their offices, looked at their proposals, and finally selected SPG Solar as the company that made us the best offer.

What did your savings amount to?
Their price was a flat $7.94/watt—about $1.50 less than the prevailing price per watt in Marin County. That's about a 15 percent reduction, but that 15 percent represented $1,000 to $1,500 per kilowatt. It was quite a substantial savings for me. Most people need a three to five kilowatt system, but it still is a substantial savings. As a result, people from all over Marin County called me and we created GoSolarMarin.

Did the solar companies demand anything in return?
We didn't promise any of the companies any particular number of home owners. We simply asked for the best price available for a large group. SPG Solar gave us a flat price that could be applied to almost all of the homes in the group with very few add-ons. That price is available to everyone in Marin County until the end of February. Part of the reason we went with SPG Solar is because while most of the other companies said that they would give us a slightly lower price, we knew that most of the houses would have additional charges.

So you basically got these solar companies to give you a group rate.
Yes. We are definitely getting a group rate, but we had no way to determine at the beginning what the group size would be. About 65 people who had called me said they were definitely interested, but about 350 people contacted me. Of those, some were interested, some just did not have a proper house or setting for solar, and some said they couldn't afford it at that time but were interested for the future. Even though we couldn't promise them anything, it's worth it for the companies to play ball. They get a great story to tell. SPG Solar is telling that story and putting it in their advertisements and saying they are the vendor of choice for GoSolarMarin. They have quadrupled their number of inquiries and doubled their number of sales over the past month and a half that this has been in effect.

Do you think something similar could work in New York or New Jersey if a bunch of homeowners got together and really pushed for it?
Absolutely. Any place where there's more than one solar provider, those companies are all competing for your business. All of the solar companies in Marin County have lowered their prices, and all of them are advertising that they'll match the GoSolarMarin price. Of course, it also depends on how much sunshine your building gets, and if your home can accommodate photovoltaic panels.

Can you give readers some advice as to how they could start something up in their own area that is similar to GoSolarMarin?
One of things I've learned is that most people who think that they can't go solar probably can. It really depends on how much electricity you need and use in your house, commercial building, apartment, etc. One idea I had was to go to New York City and speak with people in condos and co-ops, because they could put solar on their roofs that would at least service the building. It would probably pay for itself. Solar is an added value to your home. If I take out a $45,000 loan and I'm paying $350 a month, which is about my average electric bill, I'm paying it for my home equity loan instead of my electric bill. Part of it will then be deductible.

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