I would like to say thank you to the strong group of volunteers and job trainees that I have met this past year as the Workforce and Volunteer Fellow at GRID Alternatives Bay Area. I am continuously humbled by your heart and passion for the communities we serve and the hope of a cleaner environment. Since I was hired a year ago, together in the Bay Area you have volunteered 3,123 hours, helping us install 134 systems that will save over $3.6 million for the families while preventing nearly 7,519 tons of carbon emissions. This is the carbon offset is the equivalent of planting over 174,906 trees.

After working 20 years in the food service business, Doug Hackett felt unenthused and discontent with the lack of upward mobility in the industry. So when he saw a posting on Craigslist about Rising Sun Energy Center, a leading green training, employment, and residential efficiency organization based out of Berkeley, he jumped at the chance to turn his career in a new direction with Rising Sun and, ultimately, with GRID Alternatives Bay Area.

Glenda Brown had hardly thought about installing solar in the 46 years that she has lived in her house in East Palo Alto. That all changed when her daughter, Lea, who also lives in East Palo Alto, went solar with GRID last year. Lea’s experience with GRID was so positive that Glenda decided to apply, recognizing GRID as a way for her to keep her costs down.

Known for it’s low crime rate and good school district, the city of Novato is a beautiful haven in Marin County, featuring 3,600 acres of open space. These amenities don’t come without a price, however--with an average home value of upwards of $750,000, Novato is not a city accessible to all. On Saturday September 10th, GRID and Habitat for Humanity of Greater San Francisco will help change that, bringing solar to 10 new affordable homes during our 11th annual Solarthon event!

Twenty-four employee volunteers from NRG spread out on rooftops across California last week to lend their #NRGPeoplePower installing solar for low-income families with us as part of the company’s annual Global Giving Week.

David Meza's dad wasn't home when volunteers from Enphase came out to Windsor to install solar on his roof. He was out in the fields of Sonoma County picking grapes, hard work that has sustained him and his family of eight since they came to California from Jalisco, Mexico decades ago.

When Richmond-resident Kirk Essler first heard about GRID in the local newspaper, he thought that solar at no cost for income-qualified families just sounded too good to be true. “I knew my house was perfect for solar,” he explained, “…but if something sounds like such a good deal, you have to be cautious. But I went ahead and applied – I had nothing to lose.”

Retired great-grandmother Gloria Williams knows first-hand about the changes in Silicon Valley: she has seen it all over the last 40 years she’s lived in her split-level home in the Belle Haven neighborhood of Menlo Park. This March, as millions across the globe celebrated International Women’s Month, Gloria wrote a new page in Belle Haven’s history as the first recipient of a GRID solar system.

Please join GRID Alternatives on March 29 at 7pm, at the New Parkway Theater in Oakland for a screening of the Emmy Award-winning documentary Chasing Ice in partnership with the New Parkway’s Doc Night series. Chasing Ice is the story of National Geographic photographer James Balog’s quest to document the Arctic’s retreating glaciers to deliver powerful evidence of climate change to our carbon-powered planet.

GRID Bay Area is thrilled to announce that our first Women In Solar (WIS) intensive training was a huge success! The program was a part of GRID’s WIS initiative – a national push to build a strong and sustainable solar industry through greater inclusion of women’s voices, talent and leadership, as the industry's workforce is currently only 23.9% female. Over the local two week training program, GRID was proud to see women with a diverse set of backgrounds (from veteran to veterinarian!) come together to form a rockin' 10 woman team.