1. All of our Oakland projects are subsidized by a celebrity donation which covers about half of the project. Incentives cover part of it and then the rest of crowdfund. The community center pays Solar Mosaic less than would pay on their regular utility bills and we use this money to payback our investors. We only take small (around 5%) developer’s fee which is very little considering the amount of work we put into each project and is less than what many solar developers charge.

2. Most of the monetary benefits from our installations go straight to the community centers. For example, the ARC is expected to save over $100,000 in reduced electricity costs. We are currently in the process of registering with the Securities and Exchange Commission so that we can offer interest to our investors–currently we are not allowed to offer interest to “non-accredited investors”

3. Zach, there’s a small typo: the ARC system is only 30kW, all of the Oakland projects together will make up 140kW.

T Adkins, thanks for your post that definitely helped clear things up. I’m happy to talk more with anyone who has questions. Feel free to email me at lisa@solarmosaic.com

Happy to email them with any specific questions.

I guess my take on it is sort of simple:

1. a community gets a solar-powered roof on their comm center.
2. some good citizens with a little extra money on their hands get the good feeling of donating (or loaning) to a worthy cause.
3. a company getting more solar installed more quickly makes enough money to stay alive (but probably not to buy an island in the Caribbean).

But yeah, more specifics would be interesting

I can take an optimistic approach and read Mosaic as a well-intentioned and useful program designed to get solar into the hands of people who would otherwise not be able to get the needed financing.

My opinion is that we simply don’t have enough information. Perhaps the initial recruited money it the seed money needed to get the program up and running and most of the resulting lease money will be used to install more panels, letting the program grow larger and larger.

As long as the program is not overly burdened by employee salaries this could be a great way to provide solar to people who either wouldn’t be able to afford solar or would have to pay extremely high interest rates.

I’m going to write Mosaic and see if I can get a better description of what they are up to. (Actually, I’m going to lean on Zach to write them. They might want to make a larger statement in terms of an article on this site.)
Hey Zach! Email coming your way. ;o)

While Solar Mosaic may be investing a bunch of their own capital into it, the article doesn’t SAY so. If so, then it’s just the same arrangement as any ‘rooftop solar’ lease deal. They don’t say how much money they collected from ‘crowd sourcing’, nor do they say how much money Solar Mosaic put up, if any.

140KW is a huge installation. Probably several times what the community center could ever consume during the day. Unless they were running some electric kilns or doing some other kind of light industry.

As far as I’m concerned, if they want to install solar panels and run them, then they should be paying me a flat rate for rent for the space on the roof and taking responsibility for maintenance of the panels AND the section(s) of the roof that the panels are on. They can sell the power to the utility. Whether that covered some or all of my electric bill would be inconsequential; I (or whoever owns the home) would be paid a certain amount of money for the privilege of locating panels there, and have the liabilities of the installation, leaks, insurance, etc. covered. Whether I live in it and pay the power bill, or tenants live in it and they pay the power bill.

A similarly ‘good deal’ would be getting a ‘free’ roof installed with the installation of solar panels. You miss out on a big one-time expense, they get rooftop real estate for their panels with an ideal kind of rooftop surface for the panels. Win-win.

I’d like to see more about this one. Based on some of the people involved I’m guessing that they have figured out a way to get solar into the hands of those who would otherwise have trouble getting financing, but I’d like to see that spelled out.

If this is a ‘lease to purchase’ and if the lease protects against rising meter prices then it would seem to be a good deal for the home/building owner. Pay the same for power for the years of the lease while other people’s utility bills rise. And then own the system at the end of the lease period.

That would be a good deal for those who would have trouble qualifying for a solar loan, if that’s the way it works.

Making it a lease would make it easier for the solar company to get the equipment back if monthly payments are not made.

Perhaps a bit of investigative reporting work is called for….

Perhaps the ‘music man’ had to come in and convince people they needed a band, so to speak.

Perhaps everything is fair and square, and a good deal for all involved.

I have looked into putting a solar system onto my own roof, and have been, well, let’s say ‘underwhelmed’ with the honesty and technical knowledge of the various sales people who got back to me, especially a few with those ‘lease’ schemes for home solar systems.

The problem I have with the ‘lease’ solution for home is, if you pull your energy usage down near the point where affordable solar generation can cover it 100%, these schemes consider you to be a bad investment, because now you consume too little power for them to save you enough money versus buying 100% from the grid.

Well EX-CUSE ME for being miserly with my power consumption, because I thought I might invest in solar, sooner or later!

Most of the others only have ONE solution to cram down everyone’s throats. If you ask even one question that’s not on their script, their brains literally crash.

So I’m personally a bit unsatisfied with the experience of shopping for solar, and the options available, and the ridiculous hard-sell idiots who contact me if I fill out a web form. So maybe I’m projecting.

Thanks.

If you were a person who set aside your money to help the project whether it be $100, $1000, or even $1million, in about 10 years you get those monies back.

BUT what did you the company or the community get out of that: You as an individual helped your community to have more money freed up for other uses if you use the place that was helped you helped yourself. and then it just cost you time and you got your money back.

The company helped out people it will make some money, but either way with or with out them being there someone was making money, they as a company saved your community money. They helped put in clean power that clean power will hopefully mean less power plants have to be built. The action may have helped people in the community get a meaningful job.

The Community it had its members come together to help each other and themselves out. They saved money and the environment. The learned they can make a difference. They helped to make jobs.

Is this the best thing they could have done? who knows? What we know is Solar Mosaic came in and presented an opportunity for this project. The community accepted this opportunity and it looks like there will be many winners out of this.

I look at this and what do I see, it makes you think…. I just spent $150 to rent a suit for a wedding, the other month I was in Las Vegas for 10days(lets call that $1000 spent), I have a Disney trip coming before the end of the year(call that $600)… So about $1800 that I could have invested in a community and I would even get all that money back and I can even now see what that money would have done for a place like Oakland just sitting there across the bay.

Did I give them any of that money that I will get back? No I didn’t, but I will look into changing that.

-T

http://solarmosaic.com/about/team (Make sure you get down the page to Van Jones and Paul Hawkin – names you should recognize.)

I’m not thinking that this is a project with ill-intentions….

I think that’s the point.

No one is stopping any individual community or community center from going at it themselves. But the point is that Solar Mosaic is helping them, stimulating them to do so.

Yeah, that’s… ‘unique’.

Maybe I’m not grasping something.

It certainly sounds like a sweet deal for the company that sold that project to the community, but I see no benefit to the community versus simply collecting the money and paying to have the same solar system installed and warranted by any other solar installer, and then NOT committing to paying money to someone else for 20 years for the privilege of using what the community already completely paid for.

Yes, some of the investment was ‘loans’, but I wonder how much work it would be to set aside some funds month by month, and eventually cut those re-payment checks, either a few years from now, or monthly.