We’re speaking with Dave Llorens, Co-Founder and General Manager of “One Block Off the Grid” or “put solar power in the hands of just about anyone” that assembles community syndicates delivering big discounts to folks interested in solar power who may otherwise not be able to afford it.

Dave has worked as a solar systems consultant and is actively involved with the San Francisco community and governmental initiatives concerning renewable energy. He’s been able to bring solar energy to potentially tens of thousands of homes in San Francisco and is expanding rapidly.

Q: What inspired you and your partners to create 1 Block off the Grid?

A: So about this same time last year, Dan Barahona and Sylvia Ventura, a husband and wife, they had a system on their own home and all their friends kept asking them, you know, how it all worked, how the buying process worked, and they were full of misinformation and they wanted to get the info from Dan and Sylvia before actually picking up the phone and calling an installation company.  So they built this website to explain the basics and basically answer these questions for their friends and that sort of evolved to 1 Block Off the Grid.  The hurdles to early adoption to renewable energy are pretty simple: It’s expensive, so it’s a big out-of-pocket expense, sticker shock basically.  It’s confusing.  The technology itself is confusing but more so the buying process, how that interacts with rebates and net metering with you electricity bill and all that.  And thirdly, there’s a trust issue because it’s in-home sales and the same person that has all those answers to those complex questions is the same person that’s trying to sell you a system.  And 1 Block Off the Grid fixes those by: a.) We put people in a big group and negotiate discounts to make it less expensive and then on top of that we’ve negotiated a financing partnership with SunRun so we have a way for people to get solar energy possibly with as little as $1000.

Q: But you can’t do it with no money down.

A: This is $1000, I think, as the minimum, but you can split it up over the course of a year so it’s pretty close to zero as far as solar energy’s concerned.  We make it much less complex in that everyone is getting the same arrangement, that arrangement’s published on our website, so everybody’s getting the same deal.  And then that, in effect, fixes those trust issues, you know that you’re getting the same deal as John down the street.  You’re just more willing to listen to the value proposition of solar in general.

Q: I know from experience that putting random people together toward the purchase of something can be like trying to control a wasp’s nest.  How do you keep it cool with the group?

A: I would say that’s it’s mostly repeated education and that we send “Solar 101″ type emails.  I think if someone was to ask you 10,000 questions about solar energy, 9,900 would be the same 5 questions.  So we answer those in emails and then we publish everything about what’s going on with the program on the website.  And then we just answer everybody’s questions as they email us or give us a phone call.  It’s not as hard as you would think.  It’s more or less doing business as usual where they chose an installation company, it’s not too different.  It’s just that it’s all the same installation company and it’s cheaper and it’s simpler.

Q: Do you encounter many skeptics opposed to the idea of for-profit activism?

A: Of course.  We’re definitely one of the first company like this.  You know, Virgance acquired One Block Off the Grid and it also acquired a few other social activism campaigns like Carrot Mob and it’s going to be a  constant dialogue both externally and internally to make sure we stay extremely transparent about what we’re doing.  We just invited the public the other day to come into our office to basically ask us tough questions about the model we’ve chosen.  We know that it doesn’t work for everything.  It’s the very small, rare, unique situation where you find activism actually meets capitalism and that’s the best way to do it.  There is no better way to make One Block Off the Grid cause the tipping point of solar than to design it the way we’ve designed it.

Q: It may be what saves capitalism in the end.  Now, solar technology is expanding and evolving all the time.  I mean, I know I’ve seen photovoltaic paint, I’ve seen roof panels that have have solar cells in them.  How do I know what I’ve just installed isn’t gonna be, say, obsolete in another year or something?

A: That’s a good questions.  So, since the 60’s we’ve been using the same technology for solar on homes.  It’s about maybe twice as efficient as it was back then so it’s not the same effect as, say, the laptop you bought 2 years ago that you have to get a new one because it’s obsolete, it’s not like that.  So if you were to purchase a solar energy system today on your home and let’s say if offsets your electric bill, 30 years from now, it’s still gonna be offsetting your electric bill regardless of what new stuff comes out.  And I would say that most of the new whiz-bang stuff you read about, it’s usually for commercial applications.  You know, as far as homes go, there’s only really one game in town and that is crystalline silicon panels on the roof.  There’s a couple other fancy different ways to package it, there’s some building-integrated photovoltaic but more or less there’s nothing out there that’s gonna be half price next year that you can put on your home and that you’d be really disappointed about.  Because the rebates are available now in a lot of states, it’s probably the best time to go solar than it will be.

Q: As a renter, I have a landlord and I live in a really densely populated area in New York.  What are some of the challenges that the urban communities would face in trying to set up a solar syndicate such as what you’re trying to develop?

A: This is one of my personal pet projects.  So, how do you put solar on the renter/landlord market?  And more or less, it’s not done.  It’s done in extremely rare events where the landlord and renter know each other very well and they work out an arrangement between themselves but you couldn’t find one if you tried.  But the thing is that there’s no reason that you can’t do that, even today.  So in California, you could put solar on renters, you just need to work out an arrangement where the landlord can recoup his or her investment from the renter and the renter gets stabilized, possibly cheaper, electric bill that is clean renewable energy instead of grid power and the landlord gets to recoup their investment that often pencils out even better than a homeowner because they get an advanced depreciation schedule that a homeowner wouldn’t get.  So we’re gonna fix it.  If you are a renter and you are interested in solar energy all you have to do is sign up at One Block Off the Grid and while you’re signing up, check the box that says “Buy/Rent” and once we establish this sort of turn key legal solution to make this a scalable idea, we’ll get back to everybody.

Q: That’s awesome.  Please do that… soon.  I feel like it could be like a rent increase or a rent adjustment because if you’re already paying for your own power, that’s already the incentive for me.

A: Yeah, I mean, it’s tricky because each area’s different.  You know, the rent board in San Francisco is a great place to start because if you can do it there, you can do it just about anywhere.  So, we’re figuring it out.

Q: For those who are interested, how can someone start the process in their own community?

A: Okay, so if you’re in a city that One Block Off the Grid already has a campaign in, it’s really simple.  You just sign up at the website and when the time comes, we’ll start talking to you about what’s going on with the campaign and eventually you’ll get a home evaluation from a chosen solar installation company.  Now, if you’re not in one of the cities that’s active on our website, all we need is 100 people to sign up and we just make that city become active.  We’ll start a One Block Off the Grid campaign anyplace where we get a critical mass of people that’s enough for us to negotiate a discount from an installer.  For example, we had a planned pattern where we were going to move from city to city and New Orleans completely surprised us and then we’re gonna start that campaign this month.  We got over 200 people there interested in solar and there’s only 20 installations in the state so we’re excited to make a big difference there.  I grew up there so I’m pretty thrilled to go back there.

Q: So you could be anywhere in the city?  You just sign up and here’s the group.  Somebody could be on one part of town and somebody could be on the other, somebody could be a renter.  It’s just a matter of interested people, is that correct?

A: Yeah, you know, it’s not “one block at a time” and it’s not actually taking people “off the grid” because these are grid-tied systems.  Most people ask us why are we called One Block Off the Grid?  And I admit, not the best name in the world but it’s metaphor.  The idea is to remove one block worth of electricity from each city.  The programs incorporate the whole city, the installer gets some economies of scale by focusing on individual areas at the same time but most of the savings comes by removing the marketing costs for them.  The areas in which we can run programs are extremely large, basically the whole metropolitan area.

Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Solar Energy Incentive Program.