LOS ANGELES – Deep Patel has a passion for renewable energy and he is helping others go green with his Web site, www.gogreensolar.com.

Gogreensolar, started by Patel in November 2006, helps consumers – whether it is a business, homeowner, or apartment complex owner - find renewable energy providers and financiers through its online directory. Gogreensolar also helps educates buyers searching for renewable energy, like solar panels, by providing information to help them make an informed business decision.

Los Angeles native, Patel, 24, became interested in renewable energy while he was going to graduate school at Boston University, where he recently received his master’s degree in finance. Patel also has a bachelor’s degree in business entrepreneurship from California State University, Fullerton.

To feed his interest in renewable energy, he attended trade shows and began looking into gaps in the industry that needed attention. He also did a lot of research on the financial impact of renewable energy and how Wall Street investors were fueling the acceleration and innovation of the clean technology industry. In his research, he noticed consumers were primarily using the Internet to research providers, although people found it difficult to connect with service providers due to limited information. 

“You got to understand, these consumers are tech savvy. They’re early adopters of solar energy,” he said. “They have disposable income, they’re pretty rich, obviously, and they’re frequently on the computer, and they do a lot of research on the computer. So basically, putting two and two together, I figured, hey we could meet this need.”

With an established Web background – he started the site, www.rapidcite.com, which helped students automatically cite sources – Patel started gogreensolar which is based in Los Angeles. There are three Web developers, two advisors and two bloggers who work with Patel at gogreensolar. A new version of gogreensolar is released every quarter to keep up with the rapidly-changing industry and the increasing wants and needs of consumers and service providers.

Patel said gogreensolar is more than a directory, and the newest version coming out will allow providers to see a satellite image of properties and make measurements over the Internet. He believes this will make the complex sales process easier.

“The problem we really solve is streamlining the sales process and really eliminating the inefficiencies that basically cost the consumer a lot of money in the final cost,” he said.

The key to the gogreensolar’s business comes from affiliate Web sites, Patel said. Affiliate Web sites – other renewable energy Web sites and bloggers – drive traffic toward gogreensolar. Patel added these affiliates send gogreensolar interested consumers looking for renewable energy. In turn, gogreensolar sends these consumers information on renewable energy service providers in their areas.   

 “It’s the number of requests that we receive on a daily basis. So on a week, we get hundreds of consumer requests through our affiliates,” he said.

Gogreensolar partners with an affiliate, then gogreensolar puts a form on the affiliate’s Web page where people can fill it out. Patel said Web sites and bloggers were getting e-mails from readers asking questions, such as where they could find solar installers, and now gogreensolar handles those questions. “Instead of fielding all those questions with no responses, they put a form on their page and when the consumer fills out that form, that request gets sent to us. So we’re basically a distributor of leads on the Internet for renewable energy projects,” he said.

Prior to gogreensolar, Patel said bloggers did not know where to send people with e-mail questions and might direct its visitors to use Google to search for an area service provider. Now with gogreensolar, any time a blogger gets a request, they forward that request to gogreensolar, which distributes the request to its network of providers.   

“Basically we help people who are creating content about energy monetize on their content. And not only that, we help their readers find what they’re looking for,” he said. 

One of those Web sites where gogreensolar’s form is used is www.solarpowerrocks.com, a site dedicated to solar power that helps people find free money offered through different U.S. state incentives and programs, according to co-founder Dave Llorens, who started solarpowerrocks.com a year ago with Dan Hahn.

Llorens said people were e-mailing solarpowerrocks.com and asking questions, so they partnered with Patel. He was surprised how many people filled out the form and said the form is a valuable part of their Web site. He added his Web site has about 500 to 1,000 visitors per day, and about six people per day fill out the form.

Patel said most of his customers who are in interested in using renewable energy are people who are “green only if it’s economical and makes financial sense.”

“That’s the number one reason that they’ll do it. Just being eco-friendly or reducing you’re carbon footprint is very low on the scale of buying renewable energy. It’s all about the financial payback,” he added.

According to Patel, gogreensolar’s goal is to make the financing of renewable energy equipment lower than what people pay on energy bills.

Patel is also interested in renewable energy from an economic standpoint. He believes solar energy and wind power will eventually make the United States more energy efficient and reduce the dependency on foreign oil for its energy needs.

He referred to today’s energy market as the “python that wraps around our economy,” meaning that when energy prices rise, so does food and other products and services.

Patel believes that freeing up the energy market and having consumers produce their own energy will help the world. He also sees the days of buying power from the utility companies coming to an end, which he admits is a motivating factor for his work.