In On The Ground Floor

Attendees with PECO bills were treated to beer.

by Brian Howard

I spent last Thursday evening chasing down big ideas.

After work I wandered over to Greenable, my personal favorite green building supply and design shop (granted, it's a block away from the office) for an event dubbed Beer for Bills. Attendees who showed up with PECO bills were treated to beer. Which, of course, seemed too good to be true (even if the beer was just Lager).

The event was put on by a startup company called Urban Eco Electric, whose pitch at first also seemed hard to believe. Their deal: Sign up with the fledgling power company and they will install on your roof, at no cost, a solar panel system big enough to power your house. They will also lock in your current monthly electricity costs for 20 years (provided, of course, they remain solvent) — except for the first two years, during which they'll cut your electricity bills in half. All you need is a house with a flat roof and unobstructed sunlight. Oh, and they'll pay you $250 for the privilege.

Christopher Johnston, one of the three principals with president/CEO/developer David Blumenfield and Chris Metcalf, admits that in the not-too-distant past, this deal would have been too good to be true. Despite incentives through the state's recently enacted Sunshine Solar Program that lower the barrier to installing photovoltaic cells, becoming more energy independent, even if it would eventually pay for itself, is not a cheap up-front proposition. It's easier, ostensibly, for a company to absorb those costs.

So rather than too good to be true, the arrangement is essentially a 20-year lease of solar equipment which locks in an electricity rate during a time when energy costs are expected to rise, and when the current rate caps are set to expire (2011).

I have dreams of putting a roof deck on my house (don't we all?), so it's a tough call. But I think the tougher call is this: If you were making a Venn diagram of people who want to go greener, whether through solar, wind or geothermal, there's likely a big chunk of that circle that overlaps with the one representing people stoked on the idea of self-sufficiency. The dilemma: How much do you want to save the environment, and how much do you want to do it on your own?

UEE is looking to get 100 people signed up and do its first round of installations in September. The next two Beers for Bills events will take place 6-9 p.m. Aug. 20 at Belgian Café and Aug. 23 at Manayunk Brew Pub. Visit go-uee.com for information.

Next stop was Rocket Cat Café in Kensington where producer/musician Brian McTear convened a meeting for his Weathervane Music Organization, a nascent group based around an idea that's been kicking around in McTear's head for years.

The idea is to support great music by turning the recording process upside down. It's a good one, if difficult to wrap one's brain around at first. Weathervane seeks to fund, through donations and grants, recording projects for upcoming independent musicians. But it won't release these recordings. Which is what trips some people up. Artists will be set up with professional recording time, mentorship and video footage, the results of which they are free to do with whatever they want. The plan is to enlist established artists to curate the series.

A group of Philly music minds — including Devin Greenwood, Kristin Thomson, Quentin Stoltzfus, Mark Schoneveld — sat in a circle in Rocket Cat's backyard lobbing around ideas. The project states as one of its goals to "improve our cultural landscape with music that challenges, stimulates, entertains and enlightens those who hear it," which seems at once lofty and simple.

McTear admits that he waversabout calling Weathervane a club — indie music people do not tend to be joiners — though its model of listener-supported music requires membership.

Weathervane's already produced work by Austin, Texas, band Sunset and Philly's East Hundred, the results of which you can see and listen to at the Weathervane Web site. To support, get involved with or follow Weathervane, visit weathervanemusic.org, where you can download music, watch videos and sign up for alerts.

(bhoward@citypaper.net)