Tag Archives: Silicon Valley

SolarCity does everything —Will Arnold of SolarCity

Will Arnold spends a lot of time in Toronto for SolarCity but he came to Atlanta to talk to Southern Solar Summit. SolarCity does everything from financing to design, installation, monitoring, and maintenance.

SolarCity’s founders are all IT people. The most famous is perhaps Elon Musk, who also founded Paypal and SpaceX. Two other co-founders sold their previous company to Dell, and SolarCity just got a $280 million investment from Google. I’ve been comparing the solar market now to Silicon Valley 20 years ago, because of how fast it’s growing, how pragmatic and experimental it is, and the general attitude of the people. It turns out in SolarCity it is Silicon Valley.

Will Arnold talked a lot about state incentives that sometimes seemed perpetually going to be solidified soon or other regulatory whims.

He remarked that SolarCity’s leases were predicated on people Continue reading

Backyard Gardens for Community Self-Sufficiency

If they can do this in Silicon Valley, we can do it here. Joe Rodriguez writes in the San Jose Mercury News that “Latino theater director quits the limelight to help poor people grow food at home”:
Sugar peas, butter lettuce, red and white Spanish onions, cauliflower and other veggies filled the 4-by-8-foot planter boxes, which Lozano gave them. With four children of their own, the Lopezes live in a small house with two other families, 14 people in all.

The modest harvest won’t eliminate Lopez’s trips to the food pantry, but it does save the family the cost of fresh vegetables it would otherwise have to buy at the market.

“This is saving us quite a bit of money,” said Arturo Lopez, a wall-framer who hasn’t worked since injuring his back last year. “Our children are eating better. They come back here and eat a leaf of lettuce like candy.”

Who will be the Raul Lozano of Lowndes County? Continue reading