Groupon for Solar: How One Startup Plans to Create an Army of Cleantech Lobbyists
One Block Off the Grid, a San Francisco company that offers folks Groupon-style discounts for solar panel installations, is using its national expansion as a lobbyist crowdsourcing tool. It's the kind of strategy that could boost the company's bottom line and the solar industry as a whole.
How it works
One Block Off the Grid (1BOG) is often compared to Groupon because, like the popular deal-of-the-day website, it bands together a critical mass of interested customers in a specific area and uses the power of that group to make deals with local companies.
In 1BOG's case, it negotiates with solar panel manufacturers and installers to secure discounts that are on average 15 percent below the going market rate. Unlike Groupon, the company vets out all of the solar vendors and its discounts are free. 1BOG makes it money by charging installers a 25-cent per watt referral fee for each contract. A typical 3kw system (that's 3,000 watts) will generate $750.
National expansion, grassroots lobbying campaign
In the past, 1BOG has stuck to the country's largest solar markets, states that have lucrative subsidies like New Jersey. This week, the company announced a new program -- called One Nation Off the Grid -- that will offer group solar deals in 2,081 U.S. counties across 34 states.
What makes this expansion notable isn't the scale as much as where. 1BOG is setting up shop in many states that have few, if any, incentives for solar. That means a group of interested solar customers in Minnesota, Wisconsin or Indiana will likely pay more for the same system than a group in New Jersey or Maryland -- even with 1BOG negotiating the a discount.
1BOG doesn't hide the disparity between states. Instead, it goes out of its way to advertise to would-be customers how each state measures up with the help of an interactive national map launched as part of its expansion. The map is one part function and three parts a call to action.
Users can click on a state to see the number of counties with group discounts solar. But the map also gives policy grades for each state -- about half received an F -- unemployment figures, a quick summary and an estimate of how many jobs would be created if the state had better incentives. The big emphasis isn't on possible savings -- although that's implied -- but on job growth.
For example, click on Georgia, which received an F from 1BOG, and you'll see that it has 159 counties with group discounts on solar. And a quick one-liner jab, "If Georgia had better incentive, 2,758 jobs would be created over 5 years." Click on one of the counties that has a deal and users will see this:
Somewhere at a fancy restaurant in Atlanta, a powerful lobbyist is blocking job growth in your state. Word on the street is utilities are extremely cozy with state government and that might be a problem if they had a commitment to clean energy, but the folksy solar case studies on their website are just window dressing. Georgia is one of only 12 states that hasn't even set a clean energy goal yet. You don't have to take that, Georgians. Call your lawmakers today.1BOG is essentially leveraging its possible customers to push for better solar subsidies and incentives in their state. This would never work on the scale that's necessary to change state policy if it came from a solar advocacy group. But motivated consumers who want the same benefits as folks living in other states can turn into a powerful lobbying group.
Photo from Flickr user Living Off the Grid, CC 2.0
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