No money down solar for San Jose
Just in time for Earth Day, Solar City is offering San Jose residents the opportunity to plaster their roofs with photovoltaic panels for less than the usual $30,000 -- way less. The promotional program, which runs until July 31st, allows customers to lease solar panels for $80 per month with no money down -- but only in San Jose. It's just like 'Truck Month,' but for solar panels. According to Solar City's CEO, Lyndon Rive, the company hopes the Solar Lease program will draw 100-200 new customers into the world of DIY electricity. Just like with normal solar panel installation, it's not much of a profit seeking enterprise, so it's mostly attractive on a green level. On a $150 electric bill, for instance, customers would end up paying $60 to the electric company, and $80 to Solar City for their rental. Still, it opens the door to a lower-income group of eco-activists.
Other benefits of the program include free monitoring and maintenance for the lifetime of the system and, of course, a money-back performance guarantee. The website has a graph that shows how you'll save tons of cash in the long run with their solar panels, but I'm a little doubtful -- that's not really why anyone would want to opt into this program. Hopefully, solar panels will be profitable someday, but right now they're more about taking stress off the grid and promoting clean energy.
We talked some yesterday about the interconnected world of Silicon Valley. Well, it turns out that one of Tesla Motors' chairmen, Elon Musk, also sits on the board of Solar City. That's probably how the company was able to raise enough funds to offer a service like this one -- because someone's got to pay for the initial investment on that pricey solar gear.
[via Treehugger]
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