New solar group-purchasing platform designed to bring down cost

Sol Systems introduces SolMarket, a Groupon approach to solar installationsA new branch of a Washington, D.C., company aims to drive down the cost of solar energy through innovative group purchasing.

Just as Groupon and Living Social have been able to extend big savings to consumers in their networks on things like haircuts and hamburgers, SolMarket, a new solar financing branch of Sol Systems, will extend discounts to commercial solar buyers by bringing them together in a network.

“Our overall strategy is to leverage our resources and empower current stakeholders in the solar industry, which SolPurchase does fairly elegantly,” said Sol Systems CEO Yuri Horwitz. “By procuring solar equipment through SolPurchase, installers and developers can take advantage of the overall buying power of our network to access additional discounts and significantly reduce project costs.”

SolMarket is a network where members will be able to browse special deals available only to them, much the same way Sam’s Club and Costco members can take advantage of special discounts for members only. And SolPurchase offers up extra discounts for buying in bulk.

The company launched this group purchasing branch just a couple weeks ago and has already had a positive response with several businesses signing on to see what is available and what opportunities SolMarket might be able to provide.

“Our first offer that we are currently running is for high quality solar panels,” Horwitz said. “In addition to the exclusive pricing available to our network as well as the group buying discount, we are throwing in an additional incentive—the first three companies to execute purchase orders through the SolPurchase platform receive an additional 5 percent discount off the panels’ price.”

While other solar group purchasing efforts have launched in recent months, this is the first for businesses, Horwitz said.

The offerings are geared toward larger commercial purchases, and membership is somewhat selective.

“We think that at this point, given the recent introduction of SolMarket, our priority needs to be working with quality partners with successful transactional histories,” Horwitz said. “This doesn’t necessarily mean large investors or bigger projects, but it does mean investors who have committed funds and have invested in solar before, and project developers that have a track record of success.”

He said the model is designed to help mid-market solar installers and solar developers most, because they are the ones most impacted by transactional costs.

Image excerpted from SolMarket's website.