Solar “Hub Home” Program Supports Houston Residents When The Electricity Goes Out

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The model for the electricity business in the United States is a monopoly that gives one company exclusive rights to distribute electricity in a given geographic area. For historical reasons, that model makes a lot of sense. Imagine if five electricity suppliers were putting up poles and stringing wires in every neighborhood. What an unsightly mess!

It also makes sense from a technical perspective. Modern appliances and electronic devices are designed to operate within a narrow range of voltages and cycles per second. If the electricity inside our homes falls outside those parameters, that can damage the electric motors in our refrigerators and washing machines or fry the motherboard in our computers. If things get bad enough, it can damage the fatherboard, too!

But what happens when the power goes out and no electricity is flowing through all those wires? In most cases, that means no heat, no A/C, and no refrigeration. For vigorous young people, that’s an inconvenience. For older people, or those with health issues, it can be a deadly situation.

When winter storm Uri hit Texas in 2021 with multiple days of sub-freezing temperatures, 246 people died, according to the Texas department of health services. 19 of those people died when they tried to run generators or use charcoal grills for heat in enclosed spaces.

“We were like, ‘Shoot, power grid failure is a serious thing that we are not prepared for’,” Becky Selle, co-director of disaster preparedness, organizing, and operations at West Street Recovery, a northeast Houston nonprofit founded after Hurricane Harvey in 2017, told the Associate Press recently. The organization bought generators and supplied them to residents who were willing to share them with neighbors.

Solar United Neighbors And The Hive Fund

Then Solar United Neighbors, a nonprofit based in Washington, DC, offered to supply West Street Recovery with free solar panels and residential storage batteries for several homes in northern Houston. The panels and batteries were provided at no cost by the Hive Fund For Climate and Gender Justice, whose mission is to make “grants to groups working to accelerate the transition from dirty to clean energy in ways that enter justice, redistribute power, and create healthier, safer, and more prosperous communities.” On its website, it says:

We focus our grant making in the US South — a region whose high pollution levels, abundant opportunities for clean energy expansion, and legacy of environmental justice leadership make it critical for global climate progress.

In partnership with more than 30 donors, a broad array of advisors, and 10 full time staff, Hive Fund provides multi-year, general support to 140 grantee partners, primarily in Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, and the Carolinas — states contributing nearly a quarter of the nation’s climate pollution.

Nearly three quarters of this funding flows to organizations led by Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Asian American and Pacific Islander women and gender non-conforming people — impactful leaders that have historically been overlooked and undervalued by philanthropy. Our flexible and stable funding helps groups build people, economic, and cultural power to achieve and sustain wins and build momentum for increasingly ambitious and just climate action.

Well, there is enough “woke” coding in there to make a MAGAlomaniac’s head explode! Texas Governor Greg Abbott would find such programs anathema to his political agenda. But for people in northern Houston — home to oil, gas, and chemical facilities that spew cubic miles of crud into the atmosphere 24/7/365 — the program was a godsend.

Building Trust

The pilot had its challenges. Some roofs had to be repaired before they could hold solar panels, and hub captains had to learn how to manage their batteries to not deplete them. It also required connections among neighbors that modern communities often lack.

“You have to build trust,” David Espinoza, a hub home captain and West Street Recovery’s co-director of community organizing and language access, told AP reporter Gabriela Angueira. He went door to door on his block, introducing himself to neighbors who were wary of the new technology. “I got to know my neighborhood a lot better,” he said.

There are about a dozen people who have signed up to share his rooftop solar and battery system, but he said his home is open to anyone in need, particularly older neighbors, and those with children or medical conditions. There are benefits for himself as well. The system allows him to lower his personal greenhouse gas emissions while cutting his utility bill in half.

Keeping The Lights On When The Electricity Goes Off

Another participant in the “hub home” program is Doris Brown, who says she was one of the people who nearly froze to death in 2021. When the electricity went out again in 2023, she was awakened in the middle of the night to find her neighborhood was dark, while the lights were still on in her house because of the solar panels on her roof and her storage battery.

“Call everybody,” she told the neighbor who woke her up. Soon she had about 15 “neighbors and neighbors’ neighbors” inside her house, where they were able to charge their phones and electronic devices, cook meals, or shower and dress for work and school. Some slept in one of her guest bedrooms. “There were people sleeping everywhere,” she said. While she was happy to be “a port in a storm,” there was one downside. “They ate all my snacks,” she told Angueira.

Solar For All

What is happening in northern Houston is exactly what the Solar For All program, started by the Biden administration, was designed to accomplish. It was intended to help low- and moderate-income homeowners install solar systems on their homes. It was also intended to expand community solar initiatives, which bring solar power to people who don’t own their own homes or otherwise can’t install their own panels.

The program was projected to help 900,000 households access solar energy so they could reduce their use of fossil fuels and lower their utility bills. The participating households were expected to collectively save more than $350 million each year on utility costs. Of course, the savings would come from burning less methane and coal at generating stations, and that is anathema to the present so-called “government.”

That $7 billion is simply too expensive when the country needs to send $40 billion to Argentina to help out an autocratic buddy of the autocratic president, or shovel $90 billion to wealthy tech companies to help them build data centers, or slash billions of dollars from the tax bills of super-wealthy tech bros. Black, brown, and Indigenous people are simply peons to be stepped on by this administration.

Nevertheless, the “hub home” concept is an example of what people can accomplish with assistance from progressive organizations like the Hive Fund. Of course, the administration now wants to revoke the tax-free status for groups that help anyone but white people, a sure sign of a society in free fall.