Seventeen days after Hurricane Helen devastated western North Carolina, destroying power lines, destroying water mains and disabling cell phone towers, signs of relief were hard to miss.
The trucks formed a caravan along Interstate 40, filled with soldiers in camouflage uniforms, large square water tanks and supplies ranging from pet food to diapers. In town, roadside signs – an official version featuring the nonprofit’s relief logo and a makeshift wooden version scrawled with paint – advertised free food and water.
And then there was the generator.
Weeks after the city’s water system failed, a noisy machine was powering the trailers where Asheville residents sought showers. They fueled food trucks without stoves and delivered hot meals to thousands of people. They filtered water for local residents to use as drinking water or to flush toilets.
Western North Carolina is by no means unique. After disasters strike, generators have become essential to relief efforts around the world. But a New Orleans-based nonprofit is working across the region to remove as many of these fossil fuel burners as possible and replace them with batteries charged by solar panels.
This is the largest response the Footprint Project has ever undertaken in its short life, and organizers hope the impact will be felt far into the future.
“If we can deploy this sustainable technology quickly, when the actual rebuild happens, it creates a whole new conversation that wouldn’t happen if we were doing the same thing every time,” said Will Heegaard, director of operations. Masu. For the organization.
“Responders use what they know works, and our job is to give them something that works better than single-use fossil fuels,” he said. “And they can start asking for it, and that can even affect system changes.”
“Simple” solutions to gas generator problems
The rationale for diesel and gas generators is simple. Because they are widely available. Operation is relatively easy. As long as fuel is available, they can operate 24/7, keeping people warm, fed, and connected to their loved ones even when the power grid is down. Without a doubt, they save lives.
However, it is not without its drawbacks. Burning fossil fuels not only emits more carbon that worsens the climate crisis, but also air pollutants that form smog and soot that can cause asthma attacks and other respiratory illnesses.
In Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, generators became highly prevalent after the power grid failed, creating harmful air pollution in San Juan. Prices soared above safe legal limits. This risk is particularly acute for sensitive populations who rely on generators to power critical equipment such as oxygenators.
There are also practical challenges. Generators aren’t cheap, selling for over $1,000 at major box stores. Once the initial fuel supply runs out, as happened in parts of western North Carolina in the immediate aftermath of Helen, finding additional fuel can be difficult and expensive. Machines are also noisy, which can be a health hazard and cause additional stress to aid workers and the people they support.
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Hegard witnessed these challenges firsthand in Guinea in 2016, when the country was responding to the Ebola outbreak. His job as a paramedic was to train local residents to collect blood samples, store them in a generator-powered refrigerator, and transport them by motorbike to the city of Conakry for testing. He had a grant to reimburse laboratory technicians for fuel in cash.
“This is already very difficult, and the idea of doing cash reimbursement for gas generators in a super poor, rural country seems really difficult,” Heegaard recalled thinking. “I had heard about solar refrigerators. I asked the local logistics manager in Conakry, ‘Is this possible?'”
The next day the logistics person said yes. It can be installed within one month. “It made perfect sense,” Hegard said. “The only reason we didn’t do it is because the grant wasn’t written that way.”
“Responsiveness changes the game”
Two years later, the Footprint Project was born from that experience. With just seven full-time staff members, the group partners with local solar companies, nonprofits and others after a disaster, sending employees to gather supplies and distribute as many supplies as possible. I am.
They are deploying solar-powered charging stations, water filtration systems, and other so-called climate technologies to communities that need them most. The range starts from areas without electricity, water, or generators and extends to areas that are trying to offset fossil fuels. combustion.
The group has now built nearly 50 such solar microgrids in areas from Lake Junaluska to Linville Falls, more than it has ever installed since the disaster. Donations range from volunteer fire departments to trailer parks to art collectives in West Asheville.
Photographer Mike Taliado, who started the organization last year to support artists of color, has joined forces with the national nonprofit Grassroots Assistance Partnership to fill Helen’s subsequent relief gap. We partnered with. “The whole city was trying to figure it out,” he says.
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Footprint’s solar panels, which initially powered the water filters, have largely been replaced by generators for the team’s food truck, which was serving 1,000 meals a day last week. “When we made the switch, there was still a time when gasoline was questionable,” Taliado said.
Last week, Footprint’s team also provided six solar panels, a Tesla battery, and a charging station to replace a noisy generator at a South Asheville retirement community.
The device powered a system that sucked water from the pond and filtered it into potable water. Residents grabbed jugs of drinking water, cheered one after another as the solar panels were installed, and breathed a sigh of relief when the noise of the generators subsided.
“Most responders aren’t looking to use solar microgrids because they’re good for the environment,” Heegaard said. “They’re playing with it because if they can turn off their generators for 12 hours a day, they’re literally saving half their fuel. Some of them are spending tens of thousands of dollars a month on diesel and gasoline. .That’s a game changer for the response.”
“Show up for your neighbor”
Footprint’s strong relief efforts and the diversity of its beneficiaries are partially due to the scale of Helen’s destruction, which initially left more than 1 million people without power in North Carolina alone.
“It’s really hard to explain in words what’s going on in the world right now,” said Matt Abel, executive director of the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association, who visited in the aftermath of the storm. “This is the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever seen. An entire mobile home park is completely gone.”
But the wide range of responses is also due to Footprint’s approach to aid, which is rooted in connections between grassroots organizations, government agencies, and the local solar industry. Everyone is working together on relief efforts.
“We have been incredibly overwhelmed by the positive response from the clean energy community, both in terms of equipment donations and in terms of financial resources,” Abele said.
Public health threat grows as Helen’s immediate impact fades
About four hours east of the devastation in western North Carolina, Greentech Renewable Raleigh is recruiting and storing solar panels and other items. We also raise money for products that are difficult to obtain for free, such as PV wires and batteries. Then we truck supplies west.
“We have bodies, we have trucks, we have relationships,” said Shasten Joly, a manager at the company, which stores supplies in warehouses and sells them to various installers. “So we’re trying to leverage all of that to help.”
The shipment was delivered to Mars Hill, a small college town about 32 miles north of Asheville that Helen had little access to. Frank Johnson, owner of a robotics company, volunteered his 110,000-square-foot facility for storage through local government.
Abel, who is based in Raleigh, said Johnson is just one example of how people in the area have jumped in to help each other.
“When you go out there, you see a lot of people in the community showing up and dealing with their neighbors,” he said.
“Available for next response”
Admittedly, working with Footprint isn’t always seamless. For example, most of the donated solar panels specified for a retirement community in South Asheville didn’t work, but the installers only discovered that fact after driving 40 minutes in the morning and trying to connect them to the system. I learned. They returned later that afternoon with a working unit, but faced the challenge of what to do with the broken unit.
“This is a waste of solar power,” Heegaard said. “We had the same problem at the last site we went to yesterday. Now we have to find a way to recycle them.”
Heegaard said it’s not uncommon for microgrids to fail due to understandable operator error, such as running them all night to provide heat.
But above all, the footprint issue is scale. We are a small organization within a huge relief group and don’t have the wherewithal to carry out a large-scale response. When Milton quickly followed Helen, Heegaard’s group made the difficult choice to seek shelter in North Carolina.
After a natural disaster, tribes help tribes. Helen is no exception.
With weather disasters on the rise due to climate change, the group wants to encourage the biggest and most deep-pocketed companies in disaster relief to regularly use solar microgrids.
Power is gradually being restored across the region, with just over 5,000 homes still without power, but there is also the question of what will happen next.
While there is Parallel conversations are underway between advocates and policymakers. When it comes to making microgrids and distributed solar power a more permanent feature of the grid, Footprint also wants to stimulate some of that change from the ground up. For example, when a volunteer fire department rebuilds, it may decide to install solar panels on its roof.
“By pointing directly to what worked when the lights went out and the debris was on the streets, we can change the conversation around resilience and recovery,” Heegaard said.
As for the actual footprint facilities, the dream is to create a “lending library” in a place like Asheville that can be used on a rotating basis for community events and disaster relief.
“The solar trailers, microgrids, or water machines that were sent to Burnsville Elementary School immediately after the storm can be recycled and used to power music stages and movies in the park,” Heagaard said. spoke. “And that equipment is here, it’s being utilized, and it’s available for the next response, whether it’s in Knoxville, whether it’s Atlanta, whether it’s South Carolina.”
