Having a Neighbor with Solar Panels Increases Your Chances of Going Solar by Over 200 Percent.

It’s intuitive, but now there’s proof that having solar nearby makes it more likely that you’ll install panels yourself.

Our company began with this very notion, right after original founders Sylvia Ventura and Dan Barahona had solar panels installed on their own San Francisco home and discovered that their neighbors were hungry for advice on the process. Sylvia and Dan decided the solar industry itself needed a mechanism to produce this kind of neighborly advice, so they started One Block Off the Grid.

Fast forward a few years, and we were curious whether a more quantitative, analytical approach would back up our grassroots foundation, so we did a little in-house research to find out what effect, if any, the presence of solar systems have on neighborhoods. What we found is eye-opening: if you have a neighbor with solar panels on his or her house, you’re more than twice as likely to go solar yourself than if none of your neighbors have solar. We determined this by surveying an area block by block area and examining the distribution of home solar systems.

Survey Location: San Francisco, CA

We settled on San Francisco, California as the location of our survey (it was the obvious choice because it’s where we’re based). We also chose San Francisco because all California solar permits are publicized in a database, allowing us to use the nifty site SF.solarmap.org for our research. We needed to survey a city to get a statistically significant density of both people and solar installations. San Francisco, with one of the highest concentrations of home solar systems, seemed the best place to get that dual density.

Method

Our survey was very simple. We chose random residential areas of SF, and recorded the following data in each area:

• How many total blocks in the area
• How many of those blocks had solar systems
• How many solar installations were on each block that had solar

By putting all of this information together we were able to determine that the probability of someone going solar more than doubled if they lived on a block where a neighbor had solar power already.

Implications

If you already have solar panels for your home or are considering going solar, the positive effects of your decision are bigger than you think. Putting solar on your roof doesn’t just make your own home energy independent; it makes your home a beacon for energy independence in your neighborhood.  In fact this new information puts to rest an old myth about solar: that your neighbors will regard panels as an eyesore. There is now definitive proof that your neighbors will not only not regard them as an eyesore, they’ll be downright inspired.

If you’re considering going solar, you should do two things: check to see if there’s an active group discount in your area and if you end up deciding to move forward, consider talking to your neighbors throughout the process to help them understand it better. We have lots of resources available to help you do this, from doorhangers to a handy homeowner’s checklist (PDF) for going solar. If you’re interested in the possibility of having a solar expert come to a meeting of your neighborhood or homeowner’s association for some solar Q&A, just send an email to community (at) 1bog.org and we’ll hook you up!