So what’s up with our name, anyway? by dave

I thought I’d write a long overdue post to give some clarification on our name “One Block Off the Grid”

Our name is a metaphor:  Our goal is to remove one average block’s worth of electrical usage each time we run a community solar purchase campaign in a city.

So we don’t actually take people off the grid, and we don’t do it one block at a time.  :-)

Taking people off the grid: See, almost all solar power systems on homes are what’s called “grid-tied” and are “net-metered.” Off-grid systems using batteries for storage are rarely used, mostly in remote areas where it’s cost prohibitive to build a new power line to the house.  There are also a few not wealthy people who are fixated on being totally unplugged and not the cost of the solar power system itself. After all, batteries are currently very expensive, they are a maintenance headache, and at least in California, you don’t get a rebate for off-grid systems.

One Block at a Time: We do whole cities at the same time, not just individual blocks.  Grouping people together to go solar saves the installer money for many reasons, so they don’t mind letting us include homes across a large area.  The installers can see significant savings on installations when they are able to organize installation times, streamline the permit sign-off process, etc. But what you may not know is that a lot of their savings can come from reduced marketing costs. Marketing is rarely the core competency of a solar installation company. .  Their job is to put solar on roofs and do it the right way.  Because our participants pull new people into thinking about solar that might not have otherwise (a big part of why buying solar in a community is awesome), we remove this marketing expense for the installer and can pass those savings onto the 1boggers.

So those are the reasons that we often take “virtual” blocks “off the grid” rather than actual physical blocks. Hopefully that explains our name a little bit better.[new paragraph]

Now some people don’t like the name 1BOG. That’s OK, because there are also some people who don’t like adorable puppies. It’s fine, we’re over it. But lots of you (my own mother included) continue to think we are called IBOG. We went ahead and bought ibog.org, which now redirects to 1bog.org/ibog. I put a form there just because I’m interested if any of you out there would like to share your reasons for wanting to call it ibog. But hey, even if you don’t like the name you’ve GOT to like our logo, the Bogman. Everyone loves Bogman. Feel free to leave a comment below with how much you love Bogman. Thanks for reading!