The front of Laramie Interfaith is shown on Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2024, at 712 E. Canby St. Laramie Interfaith recently received a Rocky Mountain Power Blue Sky grant for $100,300 to go toward a 16-kilowatt solar array with battery storage.
The front of Laramie Interfaith is shown on Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2024, at 712 E. Canby St. Laramie Interfaith recently received a Rocky Mountain Power Blue Sky grant for $100,300 to go toward a 16-kilowatt solar array with battery storage.
LARAMIE – Everyone has an opportunity to volunteer in a way by adding an extra dollar and some change to their monthly electricity bill to help achieve more renewable energy.
One of the community’s longtime nonprofit organizations is now taking advantage of those extra funds that are set aside to help cut its expenses for the ability to enhance its motto of “neighbors helping neighbors.”
Laramie Interfaith received a Rocky Mountain Power Blue Sky program grant for $100,300 to go toward a 16-kilowatt solar array with battery storage to save on operation costs. It will allow more money to go toward its overall mission for the community, and also back-up energy for the walk-in freezer and refrigerators. The array and battery will provide 60% of the organization’s annual energy.
Laramie Interfaith is a nonprofit organization dedicated to working with its partners to prevent and alleviate homelessness and food insecurity in the community. It does this by providing fresh food and housing assistance to Albany County residents.
“We at Interfaith had been looking at the Blue Sky grant for about five years,” said Josh Watanabe, Laramie Interfaith executive director. “It was time. (It went) along with our pantry expansion project that we completed in 2022. The goal is to put solar panels on to help offset our cost and ensure that we have more funds available for doing things for folks in the community.”
The Blue Sky program is an option for customers to pay an extra $1.95 per month toward the fund. The additional money goes toward the city or nonprofit applicants for renewable wind and solar energy projects. The grant has helped more than 210 community-based projects to fund their shift into more renewable energy in the Rocky Mountain Power’s area of service.
“We run a walk-in cooler, a walk-in freezer and six other reach-in units,” Watanabe said. “In addition to that, we’ve got lights and computers and everything else that runs on electricity. The battery backup now, if our walk-in power goes out, the power goes out. They’ll help hold things cold for a while, but if we have an extended power outage I don’t have a way to go plug them in. So if the power went out for an extended period of time and we had a bunch of food spoil, that wouldn’t be any good for the folks that depend on us to get food.”
The new backup battery will help to keep the walk-in freezer and refrigerators working, and keep the food for the community fresh in the case of an extended outage.
There is no set date for construction of the solar array to begin, but Watanabe is sure the installation process will start in April.
