Grid Alternatives - The solar version of Habitat for Humanity

Last week I attended a training session for a group known as Grid Alternatives. What they do, basically, is to get volunteers and donations to install solar panels on homes of low income families in the bay area.

All the labor is free (volunteers) and the panels are heavily discounted in CA due to various federal, state, and city rebates offered. They claim for every $1 donated they are able to achieve nearly $3 in construction value. If I read that correctly, their cost for constructing a solar install is 1/3 a commercial install, due to the rebates and free labor. They are also actually achieving this, claiming to have installed 70 homes worth of panels in the last year alone.

The training I went to was about 2.5 hours, required no advanced knowledge, and while I don't feel like I could go install a set of panels tomorrow, I do feel like I learned a bit about the process and am comfortable enough to want to volunteer some weekend in the future. It sounds like their bottleneck is not labor or leadership, but rather money to buy raw materials. As a person who wishes to put some panels on my home but is unable to because I live in an apartment, I am going to be donating some of my normal donations to these guys this year instead of some of the alternatives. I like charities like this which are local, make visible, real, understandable changes, and of course it hits upon two of my favorite causes: green power(climate change) and poverty. If you live in the bay area or even if not, I would highly recommend checking them out. Well worth a look. Also definitely get on their one-mailing-per-month mailing list and/or donate a few bucks. www.GridAlternatives.Org