Group Purchase Gets Residential Solar to Grid Parity in Los Angeles

Back for a second round, the Open Neighborhoods organization in Los Angeles has organized another group purchase of residential and commercial solar PV, bringing the cost of solar incredibly close to the cost of grid power. With grid prices constantly rising, the lifetime savings of going solar have never looked better.

The savings from the group purchase are enormous.  With prices are around $4.40 per Watt installed for solar, Open Neighborhoods gets residential solar for $2.00 cheaper than the average prices reported by the Solar Energy Industries Association for the second quarter of 2011.  That equates to a 6 cents per kilowatt-hour savings on solar over 25 years.  Even with solar typically being cheaper in California, the group advertises savings of as much as 33% on a residential solar array.

The low group purchase price means that those who go solar will have cheaper electricity from their rooftop panels than average grid electricity by 2015.  If the solar user is on a time-of-use pricing plan, they'll already have cheaper electricity from solar than from their utility.

The following chart illustrates the comparison between the cost of power from a rooftop solar array purchased as part of this group buy versus grid electricity at a flat rate.

The results are promising and show that economies of scale can be achieved even with residential solar, if folks work together.