Solarize Pendleton

Solarize Pendleton. I’m Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report.

There is no doubt that the northwest is taking renewable energy to heart. Places like Portland and Seattle have really jumped on the bus but many smaller communities are making it a town project. Linsey Hardy is the AmeriCorps RARE Participant for the City of Pendleton, Oregon.

HARDY: Solarize Pendleton was started by the city last year to help residents of Pendleton overcome the logistical and financial hurdles of going solar. It was a model we adopted from a couple of different programs that had been run in the Portland metro area and Pendleton went out on a limb and decided to try to do this in a rural environment with a lot less people.

RARE, or Resource Assistance for?Rural Environments, is a program administered by the University of Oregon’s Community Service?Center that places participants in communities all across Oregon. Hardy says they narrowed it down to one contractor who does all the solar installs in the city.

HARDY: Which was really a big deal for homeowners here. Since we don’t have any contractors here on this side of the state really or anywhere in the local area it’s hard for people to call up and get a free estimate. Someone to come and look at their house or even to just find any solar resources. So that really knocked down one of those huge hurdles to going solar just to have someone here that was ready to do it.

She says they try and help educate the residents as much as possible on what will happen when they go solar.

HARDY: This year we kicked off in early March. Last year it had a little bit of a later start since they were just getting into the whole educational workshop planning phases of it. This year we kind of could hit the ground running because we knew what we were doing a little more. We started those in early March and started taking signups at the same time and so far we have about 120 people signed up this year that are interested in the program, interested in getting site assessments.

The city has put together a loan program that is helping make the project work.

HARDY: We realized that one of the biggest hurdles is just having the money to cover the upfront costs of he installation. After all the tax credits play out with an installation there’s this really long lag time. So you either have to have this capital just all ready or take out a loan so the city loan program helps to finance that gap and it’s a zero interest loan that we borrowed from the waste water reserve.

For additional information on clean energy, visit harvestcleanenergy.org. Just a reminder, BigIron.com has some outstanding equipment listed for this Wednesday’s on line sale. That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.???www.harvestcleanenergy.org