Weathersfield, Four Other Towns Form Team to "Solarize" Area Homes

Debbie Diegoli, dayglo78@hotmail.com, Route 5

Southern Windsor County will be well represented in the next round of “Solarize Upper Valley,” which will run through the end of September, 2015. The towns of Windsor, Weathersfield, Reading, West Windsor and Cavendish have been chosen as a team to promote residential solar power through the program run by the non-profit Vital Communities. The purpose of Solarize the Upper Valley is to significantly ramp up the rate of solar adoption in the Upper Valley, even beyond the borders of participating communities and beyond the time frame of each 15-week outreach campaign. Solarize accomplishes this by encouraging a very public and very positive conversation about solar energy throughout the region, and by demonstrating numerous solar success stories. The program teams up local communities with competitively chosen solar photovoltaic (PV) installers to make residential-scale solar energy more accessible and affordable for residents across the region.

Vital Communities has selected three such teams within the 69-town Vital Communities service area in the Upper Valley of Vermont and New Hampshire to participate in Round Three of the Solarize Upper Valley program. Community teams will work with Vital Communities to choose their own solar PV installer partner. The selected PV installer(s) will provide, at a minimum, competitive tiered pricing (prices drop for everyone as more residents sign up), free site visits, collaboration in community outreach, and installation services. Each community team and partner installer, with support from Vital Communities, will develop and implement a community outreach campaign between June and September 2015 with the goal of at least doubling the number of solar PV installations in each community.

A successful Solarize campaign is dependent on committed and dedicated volunteers, particularly to creatively spread the word to their communities about Solarize. Volunteer teams will collaborate on a variety of outreach approaches. Local energy committees in each town are now seeking volunteers to help with publicity and other tasks.

Lead volunteers for the participating towns are:
Becky Basch (Reading and West Windsor) – rebeccabasch@comcast.net
Peter LaBelle (Cavendish)- peterjlabelle@aol.com
Julia Lloyd Wright (Weathersfield) – dartthol@sover.net
Brendan Dangelo (Windsor) - danbrendan@gmail.com
(thanks to Becky Basch for the write-up)