Well, the Earth Day weekend of April 24 was a big one for Black Rock Solar!
Over that weekend, we sponsored the beer garden at the Los Angeles Grilled Cheese Invitational (GCI). An odd pairing, you might say, solar power and sandwiches, but we think it’s a match made in heaven. Kind of like bread and cheese.

See, we got to help the event be able to offer beer, and in return got a nice tasty slice of donations to support out educational and outreach efforts.

“The Grilled Cheese Invitational (GCI) is the largest, craziest, and most exciting Grilled Cheese cooking contest in the country and is the best thing to happen to sliced cheese since sliced bread! The GCI promotes an almost scary pursuit of perfection in a Grilled Cheese Sammich and allows for amateur and professional chefs to compete side-by-side in the hopes of becoming a true Grilled Cheese Champion.”

In 2009 Black Rock Solar also sponsored the event, on a similar but smaller scale. 2010′s GCI doubled in size, and we stepped up our game, too:

As luck would have it, when our table was mobbed with people, we didn’t get a chance to break free and take snaps. Here is our awesome team, awaiting the 8,000 people to come through the gates, most of whom wanted beer!

Big thanks to our three beer donors, without whom the beer garden could not have thrived as it did. What goes better with a perfect grilled cheese, than some of the best brews around?!

Lagunitas Brewing

New Belgium Brewing

Stone Brewing

(we assure you the only Arrogant Bastard there was the beer)
We are so grateful to have been a part of this year’s GCI. We had a blast talking alternative energy with as many people as we could. If you missed us, feel free to drop us a line at contact [at] blackrocksolar [dot] org. We’d love to chat with you.
The best news is that, as a result of the generosity of these donors and the Grilled Cheese Invitational, and you, if you were there with us at the event- we raised enough money to provide an open training workshop in Reno, NV this past weekend. At this training, almost 50 new solar installers received advanced training and are now eligible to sit for the licensure exam (there is such a thing in NV!). All because of the love of beer and cheese. We’re pretty happy with the results.

Kudos to Amani Loutfy and Rose Barnes, who sacrificed their weekends on the altar of beer and cheese for the cause of education and helping grow the solar industry!