How do you go about buying a solar power system for your home? How do you make sure you’re getting the best price?

Most of us wouldn’t know where to begin on either of these questions, and it’s that knowledge void that One Block Off the Grid — aka, 1BOG — has been trying to exploit since its founding in 2008. The company has been growing, and now it figures to get bigger after an acquisition announced this week by Pure Energies Group.

image via Shutterstock

Pure Energies is out of Ontario, Canada, where an aggressive feed-in tariff has driven solar development. With One Block Off the Grid, it’s looking to expand into the United States.

“We believe there is tremendous opportunity in this emerging retail market segment – in fact, the U.S. market alone more than doubled last year,” Pure Energies Group CEO Zbigniew Barwicz said in a statement [PDF]. “Acquiring One Block Off the Grid will help us extend the foundation we’ve built since launching Pure energies in 2009, following Ontario’s landmark Green Energy and Economy Act.”

There’s no landmark Green Energy and Economy Act in the U.S. Instead, there are a hodgepodge of federal, state and local inducements to go solar – and a wide range of companies that will lease or sell you a system.

One Block Off the Grid from its earliest days presented itself as a way to navigate that confusing thicket, while also offering low prices by aggregating customers in a geographic area and negotiating deals with suppliers and installers.

As the San Francisco Business Times reported, the company last year morphed, selling solar power systems directly to customers.

Still, the basic business proposition is that with 1BOG, you don’t overpay for solar – and it’s easy.

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