By Karlynn Cory
Think of it like Costco or Sam’s Club for purchasing solar photovolatics (PV). Some savvy folks in Oregon thought it would be a great idea to buy PV in bulk for their neighborhood to get a big volume discount and share the savings with neighbors. So they created the Solarize campaign, which over the last three years has helped Portland add “[more than] 1.7 MW of distributed PV and [establish] a strong, steady solar installation economy” [1]. In fact, so successful was the Portland model that several other communities started their own Solarize campaigns, including Washington State; Massachusetts; Vermont; San Diego, California; and multi-city campaigns from One Block Off the Grid and GroupEnergy.
Appeared in National Renewable Energy Laboratory on May 14, 2012.