Last month, Virginia became the first state in the country to launch a bulk-purchasing campaign for rooftop solar — a move that promises to bring down the cost of installing panels for households across Old Dominion.
The idea behind the program, called Switch Together, is simple: Solar panels come cheaper by the dozen. Trusted solar installers can pool demand to purchase equipment in bulk and pass the discounts on to participants.
Solar United Neighbors, the nonprofit running the initiative, has for years used this model on a local scale in communities around the U.S. But it’s now expanding statewide in Virginia at the urging of the office of Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, who is looking for ways to lower energy bills as utilities jack up rates in the world’s data center capital. Rooftop solar both slashes power costs for homes that install it and can drive down expenses for utility customers at large.
“If more people go solar, that’s less strain on the grid, and there’s less need to build costly infrastructure that the entire rate base would actually pay for,” said Brandon Praileau, SUN’s Virginia program director, who joined the group in 2023 after rooftop solar helped his church in Norfolk cut utility bills by a quarter.
