by grist
Almost two years ago, Hurricane Helen knocked out power in Burnsville, North Carolina. Fire Chief Niles Howell had to use the station’s generator to keep everything running. Through the storm, and the devastating flooding that followed, the fire department provided a landing pad for helicopters, a base for search and rescue operations, and a field hospital to treat and treat the injured.
But even with less effort, Howell can’t risk another blackout. The station is a community hub for the small town, and Howell regularly worries about the generator running out of fuel.
He can stop worrying. The fire department will soon install 40 kilowatt-hours of solar panels and double the amount of battery storage as part of a statewide microgrid project targeting communities recovering from Helen.
“I like redundancy, because inevitably everything you plan will fail at some point, so the more opportunities you have to keep things going, the better off you’ll be,” Howell said.
A growing number of organizations and even states have reached the same conclusion. As extreme rains and flash floods repeatedly wreak havoc on the Appalachian Mountains in recent years, small-scale energy resilience projects are catching on. There are many recent developments Pop up along Helen’s path through western North Carolina.
In partnership with a nonprofit coalition dedicated to expanding sustainable energy, the state Department of Environmental Quality invested $5 million in 26 microgrid projects last August. The goal is to build 24 fixed microgrids and two mobile ones, with five sites announced in June.
It mirrors similar projects in storm-ravaged communities Throughout the United States and its territories. Private and non-profits have helped put in place microgrid networks Puerto Rican communities Electrification is through an aging grid prone to increasingly violent hurricanes and frequent blackouts. Hurricane Ida prompted churches and community centers in New Orleans to launch a string of privately funded “the lighthouse“
Solar microgrids, in short, are capable of powering one or more buildings and some of them can send electricity to the grid. They often feature large batteries designed to store energy without sunlight. Fixed microgrids, as the name implies, are in one place, found across the country, sometimes powering essential infrastructure like hospitals and wastewater treatment plants. A system operated by Duke Energy powered all of Hot Springs, North Carolina and kept the lights on during Helen. Others are mobile and can be wheeled wherever needed. The technology is expensive, and all but one of the five fixed microgrids slated for western North Carolina would cost more than $100,000, a burden a small community organization would struggle to bear on its own.
The small, portable, trailer-mounted systems, which renewable energy advocates call “beehives” in nonprofit footprint projects, feature batteries and operate in sunny and cloudy weather alike. “Cooler bees” include fridges and freezers for medicine and food, “power bees” charging stations for phones and other devices, and “water bees” provide filtered water. “Because they are mobile, these bees can be transported immediately to communities most affected by disasters,” said Will Higgard, CEO of the Footprint Project.
This “bee” delivers up to 100 kilowatt-hours of energy and can power a large building for up to 10 hours. The Footprint Project is prioritizing their placement outside food banks, fire stations, community centers and libraries, all of which can store supplies and serve as hubs of community operations during disasters.
Two mobile solar power trailers will be ready for deployment in 2027, and installation will begin this summer at five of the planned fixed sites. Sara Nichols of the economic development group Land of Sky Regional Council said she hopes the project can demonstrate that a combination of philanthropic and public funding can support small-scale renewables, even as federal changes have reduced solar accessibility for many.
“We’re essentially setting the model and precedent for what we hope will be a much larger statewide and national project to replicate,” Nichols said.
Reid Wilson, who leads the Department of Environmental Quality, is already talking to potential state partners about using small-scale solar to build local climate resilience across North Carolina, though nothing has come of it officially yet. Federal funding might one day help, he hopes, but he’s not going to hedge all his bets on it. Govt. Josh Stein Asks the General Assembly to include $1 million for microgrids in him Helen requests $792 million in relief Funds don’t make the cut.
This article originally appeared on grist A https://grist.org/energy/a-swarm-of-solar-bees-are-coming-to-western-north-carolina-community-hubs/.
grist A non-profit, independent media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.
this Article appeared first North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
–
North Carolina Health News An independent, non-partisan, nonprofit, statewide news organization dedicated to covering all things health care in North Carolina. Go to NCHN northcarolinahealthnews.org with Creative Commons License
***
Photo credit: Angela Graves, who grew up in Merrimack, received initial support from the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services for a pilot program using mushrooms to help permanently clean up chemicals at the site of the former Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics plant. (Photo by Molly Raines/New Hampshire Bulletin)
Join The Good Men Project as a Premium Member today.
All premium members can watch The Good Men Project without any ads. Need more information? A full list of benefits is here.
–
Photo credit: Hot Springs’ system, which can supply 100 percent of the city’s peak load and backup power for up to six hours, went live on Oct. 2, just five days after the storm. The microgrid operated continuously for the next 143.5 hours, supplying power to the city center until power was restored to the area on October 8. Credit: Duke Energy Splash
