SunShare is doing something cool in Colorado Springs…they’re making it really easy for individual homeowners to reap the benefits of solar panels, without having to install solar panels on their own homes. SunShare is building a ‘solar garden’, where individuals can lease a minimum of two solar panels. The electricity from those panels is fed into the city’s power grid, and the leases then get a credit on their electric bill corresponding to how much power their panels produced. You can read more about how it works here.
There’s something similar in Sacramento, CA, with SolarShares. The big difference I can see is that instead of committing to output from a specific number of panels, it’s a less specific monthly fee that you pay the company.