Black Rock Solar

As part of our committment with the ROTHBURY festival to install solar power at a nearby school, we’re looking to bring new partners in to help us streeeetch our donations, so we can build even more free solar power. Here’s the message going out on their site today. Got parts? Get in touch!

CALL OUT FOR SOLAR PARTNERS!

The Rothbury Solar Schools program seeks partners for our Shelby High School
solar installation, powered by Black Rock Solar and RE:VOLVE.
Specifically, we’re interested in hearing from people who can help us get great deals on
the equipment we’ll need to make green power from the sun. Every
penny we save will get plowed back into the array, so we can install
more solar, and save more money for the students at Shelby High
School. 100% of all the money saved from this program will stay in
the school for the benefit of the students.

So, if you know what these are, and where to get a good deal on them, get in touch!

Inverters
PV panels
Racking systems ( roof mount, likely ballasted)
Combiner boxes
Disconnects
BOS materials
-tom (at) blackrocksolar.org.

We’ve been selected as the official solar partner for the just-announced ROTHBURY festival, a four day, camp out concert event in Rothbury, Michigan. They’re committing a minimum of $50,000–with the possibility of much more, donated by participants– to build a permanent solar array on the nearby high school.

Read about the show, see the lineup here, and a news clip about it here, and all about our project here, under Special Rothbury Initiatives. It’s a really great event, with a really forward looking approach to how large events can go green!

In other news, we were honored yesterday by the Washoe County Commission, in a ceremony during their monthly meeting. They passed a “Resolution of Accomplishment” noting the work of Black Rock Solar, Sierra Pacific, MMA Renewable Ventures, SCHOTT Solar, and the Washoe Co. School District in “their effort to improve the quality of life for the Gerlach students” through our installation at the Gerlach school. Aw, shucks.

And then we toured the Children’s Discovery Museum in Reno, to inspect the site for a planned installation on that new facility, later this fall.

And last night, the Searchlight Town Advisory Board approved our moving forward with a plan to build solar on the Harry Reid Elementary School there in Searchlight, south of Las Vegas.

There’s more, but that’s enough for today, stay tuned!

As reported here, on February 15th a rebate check from Sierra Pacific  and the Solar Generations program will be handed over to Washoe County School District, to help reimburse some of the cost of the array Black Rock Solar built there in December. It’s our understanding that the meters will be set tomorrow, and this array will be online this week!

Treehugger.com interviewed BRS Executive Director Tom Price for their “Year Ahead” perspective series.

The Year Ahead With Tom Price

by Meaghan O’Neill, Newport, R.I. on 01.29.08

This post is part of an ongoing series. To access all the profiles in this series, visit The Year Ahead.

Who: Tom Price, executive director of Black Rock Solar

Eco-resolution: My personal goal is to stop driving my petro-Honda. (I’m giving it to a friend who’s converting it to run on carbon-negative gasified biomass, but there may be some bugs in the process, so in the meantime he’s giving me an old 1981 Mercedes I can run on biodiesel.)

In my professional life, we hope to build 500 kilowatts of low- or no-cost solar power for schools, hospitals, and community centers across Nevada, proving that solar power can be accessible to everyone. In the past, solar power has only been accessible to either large institutions with big pockets or wealthy do-gooders, but if we’re going to address climate change, everyone has to do their part. By matching up large scale fiscal capital from our partner MMA Renewable Ventures and donated labor á la Habitat for Humanity, we’re proving solar can be done in a way that saves money from day one. (And yes, until the cost of photovoltaics comes down, public rebates are a key piece of our strategy.)

Outlook for ‘08: This will be the year we go way beyond green; it will become such a part of our daily lives—like eating healthy food has become—that it will be ubiquitous and non-controversial. What is really exciting—and a little nerve-wracking—is the way that climate change, peak oil, and, lately, peak money are all combining to give us one huge jolt to our old, wasteful ways of doing things.

The challenge then will be to maintain a positive outlook, as the full bill for our profligate, self-indulgent lifestyles comes due. By continuing to focus on the opportunities ahead while acknowledging the real impact of what we’ve done, we’ll be able to smooth the transition for people whose lives will be as radically altered in their substance and texture as were those of our grandparents when they moved off the farm and into the city.
Kenny Luna covered Tom Black Rock Solar for TreeHugger in December, when the group donated PV panels to a school in Nevada. Last May, on TreeHugger Radio, we spoke to Tom Price about the greening of Burning Man. He was then environmental manager of the event.

Really great story about Black Rock Solar popped up on Worldchanging.org today, courtesy Jeremy Faludi. Here’s the lede:

Black Rock Solar

Jeremy Faludi
January 16, 2008 11:01 PM
Ever heard of someone donating a 90-kilowatt solar array? Ever heard of them doing it over and over, and inviting you to help? Meet Black Rock Solar, a child of Burning Man’s Black Rock City that plans to make a difference in the rest of the world.

Burning Man is known for being a huge party out in the desert. For those who know it better, it’s also a utopian community based on ideas like the gift economy. For those who have been watching these last few years, its utopian dreams have started to spill out to the rest of the world. First was Katrina relief, which expanded to become Burners Without Borders. Then there was the attempt to get people thinking about sustainability this past year, with 2007’s Green Man theme. Now, there is the nonprofit org Black Rock Solar. According to executive director Tom Price, “Our goal is to build 500KW of low or no cost solar power for schools, hospitals, and community centers across Nevada in the coming year, and are looking to other places with strong rebate incentives, like Boulder and Austin as well.”

The whole thing is right here.