CREDIT:
AP/Ed Andrieski
Rick Lopez said he felt
like he’d won the lottery.
Lopez, a 63-year-old
Vietnam veteran and Denver, CO resident, had a 3-kilowatt solar system
installed on his house by a group of volunteers on Wednesday, completely free
of charge. The project was initiated byGRID Alternatives, a nonprofit organization whose
story was highlighted in theDenver Post this week. Lopez’s new system should provide power for 60 to 100
percent of his home’s electricity, and will save him hundreds of dollars in
electricity costs each year.
“We would never have been
able to do this on our own,” Rick’s wife Roberta Lopez told the Denver Business Journal. “We take it as a blessing.”
California-based GRID
Alternatives installs solar systems on low-income households in California,
Colorado and soon, in New York and New Jersey. The organization has installed
3,500 solar systems in California so far, projects that according to the
organization have saved the homeowners $80 million in energy costs and will result
in the reduction of 250,000 tons of greenhouse gasses over their lifetimes.
Once the solar system is
installed, the homeowner pays GRID two cents for every kilowatt-hour that the
solar panels produce, which typically results in energy bill savings of 80 percent. If the
system produces all the household’s energy, a homeowner in Colorado would pay
just $13 per month to GRID, compared to the state’s average $75.67 electricity
bill.
“It’s really just a huge
relief for those families,” Julian Foley, GRID Alternative’s communication
manager told Denver Westword. “They can spend money on other things they need…
That’s spending money that goes back to the community.”
And the free installation
is key — though the price of installing solar in the U.S. has fallen to record lows, it’s
still out of reach for many Americans. The solar systems GRID installs can cost
up to $17,000, but grants bring the cost down to about $5,000.
GRID depends on volunteers
to complete the installations, a setup which, along with donated equipment and
corporate backing, helps make the organization’s work possible. But job
trainees also work on installations — the organization partners with local
community colleges and organizations likeVeterans Green Jobs to provide job training for the clean energy sector. Through these
partnerships, the organization also finds people who are eligible to receive
free solar systems — those at an income level of 80 percent or below their
area’s median level.
In California, the work
GRID does also gets state funding through the Single-family Affordable Solar Homes Program (SASH). The program provides up-front rebates for low-income
families who want to install solar systems, and GRID is the program manager for
SASH’s $108 million in funds. The program will run until December 2015 or until
the funding runs out — and as the demand for SASH and its counterpart, the
Multi-family Affordable Solar Homes Program, which provides rebates for
affordable housing projects, grows, the second scenario is looking more realistic.
A bill has been taken up in the California Assembly to extend funding of the
program to 2021.
Though it might be one of
the most extensive, GRID isn’t the only group that aims to bring clean energy
and energy efficiency to low-income Americans. Washington, D.C. provides a low-income option for its renewable energy incentive program, and in New York City, Enterprise Community Partners is building super-efficient affordable housing buildings — a new
197-unit development New York City is LEED and Energy Star certified and has
214-kilowatt solar system on its roof. A New York state program provides free insulation, draft reduction, high efficiency
lighting and appliance upgrades to low-income residents, and Vermont has a
similar program.
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