LAUNCHING PROTOTYPE FUNDRAISING: The final $100,000!

LAUNCHING PROTOTYPE FUNDRAISING: The final $100,000

We have successfully raised $250,000! With thanks to our Board of Advisors, our Donors, Harvey Mudd College, and SCAG (Southern California Association of Governments) we have raised $250,000 of the $350,000 necessary for the licensing and Phase I testing. Let's raise the final $100,000!

Randall and Janell Lewis are donating the first $10,000 as a matching grant to launch the final phase of the Prototype Funding Campaign! Randall is on our Board of Advisors and the Lewis’ have been enthusiastic supporters of CHERP and Locally Grown Power for the past several years. Thank you, Randall and Janell! (Don Gould, Joe Lyons, and Freeman Allen were all $10,000 matching grant donors for Phase I.)

STATS: 106 Donors, 210 Core Supporters and Advisors, 1,400 on our mailing list.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Methods for Donating:

TEXT – Send a text to the number 707070 with the word CHERP in the message box. A secure link will be sent back to you for your credit card info and amount you want to donate.

WEBSITE – go HERE and click the yellow Donate button to fill in your information.

Ideas for Donations:

1. Cash Charitable Donations of any amount

2. Donate a Solar system to a low-income family or non-profit

3. Pre-purchase a 5.4 kW Solar PV system for your home or business

Pre-purchase a 5.4 kW Solar PV system for your home or business for $10,000 The first 6,000 solar panel systems made in the factory will be placed on the lowest-to-middle income (LMI) homes in Claremont and Pomona – except for those who have pre-purchased systems to help us open the factory, who will receive their systems along with the first LMI households.

Benefits of pre-purchasing a Solar PV system from Locally Grown Power: For $10,000, you can pre-purchase a complete, installed, 16 panel solar system that will generate

approx. 5.4 kW per year. This system, on the market today, sells for $14,000 - $15,000 (when figuring micro-inverters or optimizers, which our panels do not need). The year it’s installed (we are projecting end of 2018 or first of next) you will most likely qualify for a 30% federal investment tax credit which will

bring the net pre-purchase price to $7,000.

This 5.4 kW system will offset approx. $1,300 per year @ 16 cents per kWh (Tier 1) $1,500 per year @ 19 cents per kWh (Tier 2) $2,500 per year @ 30 cents per kWh (Tier 3)

You will receive the most advanced solar panel system in the world at least two years earlier than any other middle-to-high income households or businesses (Our first two years will be spent installing systems on 6,000 LMI households because it is our core mission to serve those households first and because it is absolutely the best way to stimulate the local economy. Once all the LMI households have solar systems, we will then begin selling them to the higher income level households and businesses.)
$7,000 cost divided by $1,300 (minimum) savings per year = simple payback in 5.38 years. In very simple terms, that’s about an 18% annual return on your investment and a lot more if you are offsetting costs from Tier 2 and 3.
That leaves 20 years x $1,300 (minimum) = for a savings of $26,000 conservatively, because it does not count the increasing cost of energy (+45% in the last 15 years).
Savvy Real Estate Appraisers know that the present value of an average solar PV system now adds more value to the home than the cost of the system. So, for $7,000, the system will immediately increase the value of your property by at least $15,000, and a lot more if you are offsetting kWh costs from Tier 2 and 3 (see above and link HERE for sample appraiser formula worksheets).
If you are putting the pre-purchased system on a business, the new depreciation tax code rules allow for a 100% first-year depreciation of capital expense on the system, reducing upfront cost even further.