The Cano family of Greenfield built their own home from the ground up through CHISPA, a local affordable housing organization serving low-income families. Now they are powering it from the sun. GRID raised a solar electric system to their roof on Monday, June 18th and Tuesday, June 19th with a team of job training students from the Center for Employment Training (CET) in Gilroy, bringing them clean power that will help them live more affordably in their new home. Supervisor Simon Salinas and CHISPAs President/CEO Alfred Diaz-Infante were on site to get a first-hand look at a community bursting with solar power.
Supervisor Simon Salinas said, I was happy to see GRID Alternatives doing great work in the Salinas Valley. I hope to see them continue their work throughout the Salinas Valley!
GRID Alternatives Central Coast has installed 62 solar electric systems in Monterey County with the help of volunteers, job trainees, subcontractors and corporate and individual donations since 2010. These systems are generating over two megawatts of renewable power from the rooftops of affordable housing homeowners with no out-of-pocket cost to the homeowners.
Fourteen of those installations have been in Greenfield, saving its affordable housing community an average of $300 annually per family. The Cano familys system (16 Yingli Energy Panels and 16 Enphase Energy Micro Inverters) was powered up on August 8, 2012, and will save them $450 a year, money they can use on food, clothing and other family necessities.
The systems are also helping clean the regions air, generating new power than wont have to come from non-renewable sources. Over their projected 30 year lifespans, these fourteen systems in Greenfield alone will prevent 1.3 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions the equivalent of planting 31 million trees!