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On Friday, a coalition of nonprofits gathered at MANNA Food Bank in Mills River to give updates on a new program to bring solar-powered energy to disaster-impacted areas in western North Carolina. This is a new phase of an ongoing effort to help local communities get off grid power during storms.
This announcement comes after the Department of Environmental Quality invested $5 million in microgrid projects last August in partnership with renewable energy and economic development nonprofits. Partners include the Louisiana-based Footprint Project, and state and local organizations like Land of Sky Regional Council and the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association.
These small, solar-powered microgrid setups are called Beehives. They run on up to 100 kilowatt hours of energy, which means they could power a large building for up to 10 hours in the event of a blackout. The plan is to have 24 stationary “bees,” with two mobile units that can be transported as far away as Cape Hatteras if needed. These small, portable solar-powered trailers are equipped with batteries in order to store power, and work in sunny and cloudy weather alike, according to partners in the project.
The five locations announced Friday include the East Asheville Library in Buncombe County, the Beacon of Hope food distribution hub in Madison County, Buladean Community Center in Mitchell County, Bill’s Creek Community Center in Rutherford County, and the Burnsville Fire Department in Yancey County.
“Beehive Microgrids are made up of an ecosystem of solar and battery systems on towable trailers that provide a range of services,” said Footprint CEO Will Heegaard in a press release in advance of the event. “Cooler Bees include fridges and freezers and can store food, medicine and ice. Power Bees charge electronic devices, medical equipment, and portions of entire buildings, and Water Bees provide drinking water filtration. Because they are mobile, these bees can be towed immediately to communities hardest hit in disasters.”
Heegaard added that these two new mobile solar power units will be fully completed and ready to deploy in 2027. Installations at the five announced stationary sites will begin this summer, in hopes they will then be able to serve emergency needs in a disaster.
“It's going to be powering well pumps to keep water access open, fridges to keep food and medications, fresh and functional lights on critical facilities, right?” Heegaard said.
This follows similar projects in storm-battered communities across the U.S. and territories, including Puerto Rico and New Orleans.
The locations of these stationary microgrids have been coordinated by the Land of Sky Regional Council, according to Land of Sky’s Energy and Economic Development Program Manager Sarah Nichols.
This comes at a time when federal incentives around renewable energy are in flux. “We are essentially setting the model in the president for what we hope will be a much bigger statewide and national project to duplicate,” Nichols said.
Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Reid Wilson is already in talks with partners around the state about how to continue using small-scale solar to build out local climate resiliency across the state. Federal funding could be a possibility again, but DEQ is trying to keep options open.
“If Congress was to come through with another disaster recovery bill, quite conceivable that they would decide to put microgrids in it, but it's conceivable they wouldn't,” Wilson said.
For at least one recipient, this is an exciting moment.
During Helene, Burnsville Fire Department chief Niles Howell had to switch to the station generator in order to keep power. The station serves as a community hub for the small town, and he worried that if roads weren’t made passable quickly, he would run out of gas, and be unable to store food and other essentials for the people nearby. Now, that may be less of a worry.
“I love redundancy, because inevitably what you plan for will fail at some point in time, so the more avenues you have to keep things going, the better off you are,” Howell said.
