The Green Team has worked for the past year to bring the project to fruition.
The panels are being installed on the Hope Village community center with a ground array being erected in the parking lot to power the center and its 10 tiny houses.
The Hope Village solar project involves installing solar panels and battery backup systems to take the community center and tiny homes off-grid.
The Green Team has been responsible for planning and finding funding for this and other ambitious solar projects in the larger community and at the schools.
Hope Village is a community of tiny houses that have been built over several years to help solve the Chippewa Falls housing crisis. There are no longer any local shelters for locals to use so this provides an option to low income residents struggling to afford a place to live.
HOPE VILLAGE GOES GREEN
The Hope Village solar project was initiated by three Chippewa Falls High School students who secured $180,000 in grants for the solar work as members of the Green Team.
Grants included funding from the Public Service Commission's Energy Innovation Grant Program, Couillard Solar Foundation and the Solar Moonshot initiative.
The team's collective aim was to install a 40 kilowatt photovoltaic system at Hope Village. Now that dream is coming to reality.
"Everything was covered by those grants and these young ladies put in a tremendous amount of work," Executive Director of Hope Village Mike Cohoon said Monday.
The solar panel system will fulfill all the energy needs of Hope Village, revolutionizing the shelter's environmental impact and operational efficiency.
Over 30 years, the panels are expected to save $380,000 in electric costs, Cohoon said.
Hope Village works because of its community center that supplements space for tiny house guests at Hope Village.
"So we have a community room in the community center so people can come in and stretch out a little bit, maybe eat in the community center, or watch TV, read the papers, whatever, just to give them a little bit more room, especially if they have children," Cohoon said. "Children need some space to kind of stretch out in."
The community center also serves as a "clubhouse" Cohoon said, with three bathrooms, a laundry facility, kitchen, offices, classroom and a severe weather shelter.
Hope Village is growing with new tiny houses in the works and new duplexes and a six-plex under construction. Those are funded by the American Rescue Plan Act with plans to move residents in by April 2025, Cohoon said.
All new residents using the community center will benefit from the solar power.
GREEN TEAM SUCCESS
Bella Biederman, Kamryn Glamann and Maddie Hunt helped form the Green Team at Chippewa Falls High School in the fall of 2022 and the Hope Village project was their vision.
All three students were in their junior year and remained involved until they graduated. Now a new trio forms the Green Team and they are ready to pick up where Biederman, Glamann and Hunt left off.
Chippewa Falls High School Science Academic Chair Nick Gagnon advises the Green Team, which is now made up of high school juniors Zoey Eckwright, Chloe Johnson and Ellie Crosby.
"We're just going to keep trying to expand with solar panels," Johnson said.
Notably, the grant proposal included provisions for an emergency backup battery system dedicated to the community resource center.
This addition ensures uninterrupted power supply during emergencies.
"It's cool for us at such a young age to, like, be able to be engaged in a project so big, like that," Eckwright said. "I think energy conservation and educating community members about the future of energy and solar and clean energy is very important, and it's worth our time to make that happen."
BIGGER AMBITIONS
Gagnon said the Green Team wrote an ambitious $1 million grant proposal in 2022 that was unsuccessful but provided valuable learning for the students involved. That grant application would have brought LED lighting to the schools in Chippewa Falls.
In addition, Gagnon said the students proposed putting solar panels on the roof of the high school last year.
"The roof manufacturer wouldn't allow it. It would void all the warranty," he said. "Then we looked at the land that the school owns to the north here, there's two empty lots."
That plan also brought hiccups that caused them to change course, he said.
The Green Team has pursued multiple solar projects through grant applications and fundraising. Not all ideas or applications have succeeded.
"Initially, we tried to fundraise for solar panels for our school roof, actually, but after looking at different roof mandates it was pretty impossible to do," Eckwright said.
Then the team looked at putting solar panels on the roof of the high school concession stand.
"We just didn't have community fundraising, enough of it at that point," Gagnon said.
But the team's Public Service Commission grant application last year was successful as were two others which are funding the Hope Village project.
EDUCATING ABOUT ENERGY
It's not the only progress noteworthy for the Green Team.
The Green Team met with OneEnergy at the end of last year.
"They donated a 12-panel array for our school, which will be in the front of this school," Johnson said.
OneEnergy Renewables is an independent developer of utility and community-scale solar projects. The company develops, engineers, constructs and operates projects in the Midwest. It is currently involved with the Chippewa Sun solar project at the intersection of 143rd Street and 40th Avenue in Hallie.
The Green Team made a trip to Hallie to visit the site earlier this month.
At the high school, the team is looking to put up a display of energy savings.
"We just wrote an AnnMarie grant to get like this TV display to show the energy savings. And we thought that would be a great first step to introduce our school with solar, to show them at the front of the school that we can get solar panels," Johnson said.
Team members said energy efficiency is important but they also like the community engagement aspect of the work with Hope Village and other area nonprofits.
The team is working on a project at Our Nawakwa, focused on energy efficiency improvements before considering solar panels.
The camp needs to work on energy efficiency of things like electric water heaters and ventilation, Crosby said.
"While solar, yes, like it looks cool, and everything but in the long run, this just made more sense. Because the camp is pretty new and it's a nonprofit, when the budgeting becomes more available, maybe the Green Team can go for the solar panels," Crosby said.
©2024 The Chippewa Herald, Chippewa Falls, Wisc. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
