GRID’s Bay Area office honored Veteran’s Day 2012 with a very special solar installation: a team of students from Laney Green Jobs, including several veterans, worked all weekend to complete a solar system on the home of a fellow veteran in Richmond’s Iron Triangle. The system is expected to save Mr. Avila, a Marine Corps veteran who served in Vietnam and now lives on a fixed income, over $22,500 in energy costs over the lifetime of the system.

Last week, new GRID Alternatives staff and interns from across the state, the Bay Area construction team, and co-founders Ericka Mackie and Tim Sears installed solar panels on two low-income homes in the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco.

On a hot day in August, a crew of solar installers from Real Goods Solar pulled into a dusty driveway on the La Jolla Indian reservation on the rural northeastern edge of San Diego County, nearly two hours from San Diego. Doris Magante and her flock of grandchildren and great-grandchildren were waiting for them.

In honor of Veteran’s Day, GRID Alternatives Inland Empire (GRID IE) solarized 2 homes of retired U.S. Army Reservists. The installation was led by GRID IE's Veteran Volunteers.

We did it! In partnership with People’s Self-Help Housing, all 33 single-family homes in the Templeton Terebinth Lane self-help development have a complete Yingli photovoltaic (PV) system installed by GRID Alternatives.

Put on your party hardhat and celebrate: the 7th Annual Bay Area Solarthon on July 21st in San Jose was a HUGE success! Thank you to all of our amazing sponsors, Solar Champions, homeowners and job trainees from the Center for Employment Training who all came together to successfully install 13 solar electric systems (a total of 262 solar panels) in one day!

Twin brothers Tyrone and Jerome Saxton, both former Army Reservists, got a special gift for Veteran’s Day this year: new solar electric systems to power their homes. The systems were installed Friday, November 9th by volunteers from Wells Fargo and Thrivent Builds, led by GRID’s Veteran construction staff and team leaders.

Erica Court, a normally quiet cul-de-sac in Oceano, CA was bursting with solar energy Saturday October 20th as more than 150 volunteers—individual sponsors, corporate teams, job trainees and the homeowners themselves—get up on roofs to install solar electric systems for eight low-income families during the GRID Alternatives Central Coast Solarthon.

It’s official: the North Valley GRID Alternatives Office successfully completed our first annual Solarthon on October 6th, in Chico, CA. Thank you to all our supporters!

Six days, twelve families, hundreds of volunteers, staff, and curious onlookers, and a whole lot of fun! Today was the final day of our Colorado pilot project, and the sun was out in all its fall glory. Maria Ojeda was one of the last homeowners to get her system, and she looked on as a team of 11 women (our first Colorado Women’s Build!) scurried up and down the ladder, hoisted panels, pulled wire, etc., making short work of a relatively complex installation on her double-pitch roof.