Solarthon

At 90-plus degrees, Saturday was a sweaty day for the third annual GRID Alternatives Central Valley Solarthon, but for the families of Parksdale, it was a happy one. Thanks to the hard work of over 100 individual sponsors, corporate employee volunteers, job trainees and the homeowners themselves, the families’ electrical meters will be running backward this summer, not forward, saving them thousands of dollars during what is usually a season of high bills.

When Bryson Pagh, a solar student at Fresno City College, showed up at a job fair for Real Goods Solar two years ago, there was one thing that set him apart from the hundreds of other job seekers: he already had close to 70 hours of hands-on installation experience under his belt through GRID Alternatives.

On Saturday, April 21, rooftops in the Parksdale community of Madera, California, will be swarming with people: community members, job trainees, local business employees and homeowners all working together to install clean solar power for families that live there.

On November 5th volunteers, sponsors, job trainees and GRID Alternatives staff from all over the state got together to successfully install 10 solar electric systems for 10 families in 1 day. Despite rain on Friday the skies opened up on Saturday for what turned out to be a warm and sunny afternoon. This provided the perfect backdrop for what was an overall wonderful community based event.

This past summer GRID Alternatives-Greater Los Angeles held our first annual Solarthon in Piru, California. It turned out to be an immensely rewarding experience for the homeowners, the sponsors, volunteers and GRID staff. In fact, the experience was so rewarding that, we felt the need to continue the story.