Orchard Gardens Solar
In the spring of 2024, we learned that housing nonprofit Homeword's large solar array at Orchard Gardens was not working due to older, faulty inverters. Homeword pays for tenants’ utilities and, with no budget for this major repair, the nonprofit was feeling the impact of less solar gain and higher electricity bills.
What a perfect Catalyst Fund project.
Project funder Climate Ride, another Missoula-based nonprofit, was looking to "offset" their emissions with a local clean energy project benefiting low-income housing. Climate Ride aims to be a “climate positive” organization and offers global biking and hiking excursions with a fundraising component that supports climate action. Through this fundraising model, they were able to donate $10,000 for this project
We then pooled that contribution together with additional individual donations and a River City ROOTS festival contribution, allowing us to purchase and install four new solar inverters.
A big shout-out to Orion Thornton of OnSite Energy for helping to figure out the issue and making the replacement seamless.
Note: The Climate Catalyst Fund was previously called the Footprint Fund.
