For the past two years, the NY-Sun Initiative has been working to reach Gov. Cuomo’s goal of increasing New York State’s solar capacity to 3 gigawatts by 2023. So far, the state has installed or contracted 316 megawatts of solar electricity, more than the entire previous decade. And from now until January 30th, schools, non-profits and governments will be able to upgrade to solar systems for bargain basement prices.

According to NRDC,  community purchasing programs along the Solarize model (remember our Solarize Brooklyn campaign*?) which allow localize homeowners and groups to join together to aggregate their purchasing power, much in the same way that a large organization can to get good deals for health insurance for members or employees. Installers are happy because working on groups of systems in one area is more cost effective that doing isolated installations on many different blocks; customers are happy because they save a lot of money; and we should all be happy, because more solar installations means less pollution, better air quality and fewer greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere.

* Max Joel, who ran Solarize Brooklyn, is now the Community Solar Program Manager for NYSERDA. Congratulations, Max! We know this will be a huge success!