Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
pay today. Just as important is the fact that you can now lease the solar system rather
than having to pay for the whole thing up front. As discussed earlier, paying for a solar
system all at once is a bit like buying your energy for 25 years or buying a chunk of the
coal-fired power plant rather than paying for your service contract with a utility. One of
the big changes for the solar industry in recent years has been the third-party financing
ofourassets, which means we sell a service as well as a product. The solar lease is a real
game changer.
The other reason why now is the right time to go solar is that we have made it easier.
In the past, if you were interested in going solar, you had to research a local contractor,
call him, and get him to come out to your house so he could climb on the roof to design
a solar array—and then he would come back to try to sell you a paper-based proposal.
There were a lot of scheduling issues and clunky cottage-industry customer experiences
withsolarinthepast.Aswe'vescaled,we'velearnedfromotherindustriesandmadethe
buying experience much more convenient.
Sungevity as a Case in Point
To get a solid quote, Sungevity's customers fill out a simple online form, which includes
identifying their home on a map interface for us. We then use a combination of satellite
andaerialphotographyofthehometobuildathree-dimensionalmodelandvirtualizethe
deployment of solar panels on the roof. We do this to calculate the electricity produc-
tion from the panels and thereby generate a firm quote, including the economics, for the
installation of the solar panels in real life. Unlike with solar's mom-and-pop-shop exper-
ience of the past, we never have to climb up on your roof to tell you what it will involve
to go solar.
With the magic of software combined with satellite and aerial imagery, we can do in
a snap what it took human processes hours to complete. Then, as in so many other in-
dustries, from the replacement services for travel agencies (think Expedia) to those for
video stores (Netflix), we serve up our core product, which is our solar proposal—or, as
we call it, the iQuote—over the Internet. We e-mail it to you. Not only does this save us
great cost in serving our customers but it's a scalable model, whereas driving trucks in
traffictoservemillionsofhomesthatshouldgosolarisnot.In2011westartedapartner-
ship with a company in the Netherlands, and we're now providing remote solar-design
servicesforhomesinthatcountry,aswell,whichisagreatdevelopmentfortheUSsolar
industry.
I say it's a great development not just because the company I work for is doing this
but because it's bringing easy and affordable solar to more people. Aside from cost sav-
ings and scalability, our online sunshine model, as we call it, creates a better customer
