NewsletterThe Solar Bank is a nonprofit company that addresses three of the world’s largest problems: poverty, the economy, and climate change, by providing clean and sustainable energy to low income families at reduced and free rates. The Solar Bank realizes that the segment of the population that would benefit the most from solar power is low income families and overcomes the traditional obstacles that these families normally face to make this a reality. The Solar Bank turns the obstacles of high upfront costs that are nearly impossible for low income families to pay, the prerequisite of being a homeowner, and unreliable sunlight levels into strengths in an effort to revolutionize the accepted paradigm of how we power the world.
The Solar Bank buys, owns, and installs solar panels on a solar farm and provides the energy they produce to low income families at a cost that is lower than traditional energy companies. The solar farm is set up on a matching principle where for each kilowatt hour of energy a family uses our farm has that same number of kilowatt solar panels. My company offers a seven year financing plan that is, internally, split into two segments. The first is a five year period where the family sends their electricity bill to us and we pay it with the money produced from selling the energy our solar farm produces back into the grid. Every month the family then pays us an amount equivalent to 80 percent of their monthly energy bill. That money goes straight to a different account that goes towards financing the solar panels. At the end of the five year period the family will have received their energy at a 20 percent discount and will have paid my company enough money to pay off the cost of the solar panels. Phase two of the financing plan then starts. For the next two years the family will continue to pay us 80 percent of their electricity bill but that money will go into our bank account for paying administrative costs and reinvesting in more solar panels for more families. At the end of this two year period the solar panels will be owned by the family and the family will receive the money the solar panels produce each month potentially saving the family over twenty thousand dollars over the useful life off the solar panels. This plan is both socially and economically sustainable and can be likened to “adopting” solar panels.