Frequently Asked Questions
(Please check out 1BOG University for more information on solar power)
On this page:
- How do I sign up?
- Which cities are eligible for 1BOG?
- How can I get my neighbors to sign up?
- How much will solar cost me?
- Is it only “One Block?”
- Is it really “Off the Grid?”
- How does 1bog get paid?
- What if I’m a renter?
- How do you vet the solar installers?
- Do you always pick giant solar installers?
Use the sign up form on the right to join the 1BOG solar community program in your city. You will need to provide your current electricity usage data, and later in the process we’ll ask you to have a short solar assessment done on your home. This assessment is necessary to make sure your home is a good candidate for solar.
Which cities are eligible for 1BOG?
Any city! Yours doesn’t have to be on our list to be considered for a 1BOG program. As soon as we reach a group of 100 people signed up in a given region, we can launch a 1BOG campaign.
In the meantime, you can help to start spreading the word by becoming a volunteer or field organizer. The bigger your group gets, the more leverage we have to negotiate good pricing for everyone.
NOTE: By signing up for 1BOG right now – wherever you are – you’ll help us identify the cities with the greatest interest, and help us decide how to best use our resources!
How can I get my neighbors to sign up?
The success of this movement depends on getting as many people to commit to using solar energy as possible. You can help spread the word about 1BOG by emailing your friends, neighbors and colleagues. If you’d like to setup a neighborhood meeting about the 1BOG program, you can contact us, and we’ll help you get organized. You can start now by using some of the handy tools available in our Field Kit.
When we negotiate and select an installer in your city, the pricing will be posted on your city’s page. You can always check out our solar economics page for information on solar costs. The pricing will vary campaign-to-campaign and city-to-city, but it will always be discounted from the going market rate for solar in that location. You are always encouraged to prove this to yourself by getting bids from non-1BOG installers.
Nope, it’s just a metaphor, we want to take one block’s worth of energy usage out of every city per campaign.
Nope, it’s a metaphor, we want to take that amount of power out of the equation and make it clean energy instead of often dirty grid power. But understand, the solar systems are still connected to the grid (that’s how you’re able to sell energy back to the utility).
If it’s not “One Block” and it’s not “Off the Grid,” why are you called “One Block Off the Grid?”
… Quiet, you… it’s a good name. We like metaphors, and it goes really well with our super cute bogman logo.
1BOG is free to all participants! The reason it works as a business is that all solar installers pay fees in exchange for customer referrals. When we take a whole community and give a solar installer access to everyone in that group, they are getting a lot of new customers, and they pay us a referral fee per home.
The referral fee is the same regardless of which installer wins, so it does not affect our selection decision. Our interests and our members’ interests are always aligned. No money changes hands between us and the members, and the fee is a small fraction of the actual discount. Any price we quote in a campaign is the price you see, and the referral is already worked into it.
If you’re a renter, as it stands, you gotta get your landlord on board. It’s possible, it’s just difficult. We’re brewing a turnkey legal solution paired with a few other things to super-simplify this concept, blowing this market wide open. Keep your eyes on our blog.
How do you vet the solar installers?
We have people from the solar industry who make sure the RFP process is comprehensive. Plus, we also get to see the different installation practices, warranties, products offered, and corporate structure of dozens of installers across different states. We have a unique knowledge base to make sure we get a good company and negotiate a good deal. We also vet past installs done by the solar companies we are selecting from.
Do you always pick giant solar installers?
We usually make it a winner-take-all program to keep it simple and have it be the most effective. That means we need an installer that’s big enough to handle the 1BOG group. This is the way we do it right now and our goal is simply to get as much solar on as many roofs as possible. We hope that this rising tide lifts all ships in the market. As we get older, we’re going to start some market development programs where we’ll partner with several smaller installers.
