If you can pay your electric bill, you can make the switch to solar. That's because Citizenre will install photo voltaic panels on your roof and rent them to you for the same price as your current average monthly electric bill. Plus, once you sign a rental agreement, your flat rental rate stays the same for the life of your 1, 5 or 25 year contract. Consider for a moment what one's energy bill might look like 25 years from now. If you choose the long haul 25 year contract, Citizenre will move your panels one time if you move or you can transfer them to the new owner of the house, who will luck out by getting the rate you signed up with however many years ago. There's not only a wonderful sense of security of having affordable energy in the future, but also the assurance that you aren't contributing to things like Appalachian mountaintop removal coal mining, air pollution, global warming, foreign oil dependence and all the detriments of conventional dirty power.

These panels rely on the grid to store your power. If you use more energy than your panels produce, you draw from the grid. If you use less, you sell your excess power back to the grid. This is called "net metering". Citizenre is only available to the 40 states that have it. So far, almost 30,000 people have signed up, including me. If you own your home and live in a state that offers net metering, you can sign up too.

The benefits are many: you lock in your current rate for up to 25 years, there is no upfront investment other than a $500 refundable deposit, no rate increases, no system purchase, and no maintenance fees to name a few. You can look at your account online to find out how much power you're creating and how much you're using.

It sounds so ideal that it's drawing some criticism. However, most of the naysaying is coming from traditional solar retailers. I can see why they see Citizenre as a threat since cheap accessible solar will surely be bad for business. They're posing good questions like, "How can they hand out $50K solar packages for no upfront cost?" Citizenre plans to build a manufacturing plant and build their own panels which will reduce cost tremendously, plus with net metering, there's no battery or converter which reduces the cost of the system. "Why haven't they broken ground on the plant? It was slated to break ground last September." This remains to be seen, but I'm sure there's a good reason. I choose to be patient because it seems like something worth the wait, besides, there's no deposit until you approve the design, so what's the problem? "Why haven't they named their investors?" Citizenre is a privately owned company and has no obligation to name investors until they go public.

I don't know when my panels will be installed, but I just love the thought of producing my own clean renewable energy. They also have a nice referral program. For anyone you refer, you will receive credit on your bill for 5% of their monthly bill for the life of their contract, up to the entire cost of your bill. By doing this, they create a widespread grassroots campaign that gets the word out without spending a fortune on advertising.

To learn more about Citizenre and to reserve your system, visit their web site.