Seventeen days after Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina, downing power lines, destroying water mains and disabling cellphone towers, the signs of relief were hard to miss.
Trucks formed a caravan along Interstate 40, filled with camouflaged soldiers, large square tanks of water, and essentials from pet food to diapers. In towns, roadside signs — official versions with nonprofit relief logos and makeshift wood scrawled with paint — advertised free food and water.
And then there were the generators.
The noisy machines powered the trailers where Asheville residents sought showers, weeks after the city’s water system failed. They set fire to the food trucks that delivered hot meals to the thousands without working stoves. They filtered water for communities to drink and flush toilets.
Western North Carolina is far from unique. In the wake of a disaster, generators are a staple of relief efforts around the world. But across the region, a New Orleans-based nonprofit is working to displace as many of these fossil fuel burners as it can, replacing batteries loaded with solar panels instead.
This is the largest response effort the Footprint Project has ever deployed in its short life, and organizers hope the impact will extend far into the future.
“If we can bring in this sustainable technology quickly, then when the actual rebuild happens, there’s a whole new conversation that wouldn’t have happened if we just did the same thing we’ve done every time,” said Will Heegaard, operations director, said. for the organization.
“Responders use what they know works, and our job is to get them things that work better than disposable fossil fuels do,” he said. “And then they can start asking for it. It boils down to a system change.”
A ‘no-brainer’ solution to the problem of gas generators
The rationale for diesel and gas generators is simple: they are widely available. They are relatively easy to operate. Assuming fuel is available, they can run 24/7, keeping people warm, fed and connected to their loved ones even when the electrical grid is down. No doubt they save lives.
But they are not without drawbacks. Burning fossil fuels not only releases more carbon that exacerbates the climate crisis, but smog and soot-forming air pollution that can cause asthma attacks and other respiratory problems.
In Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, generators were as common after the electrical grid failed with the harmful air pollution in San Juan has risen above the safe legal limit. The risk is particularly acute for sensitive populations who turn to generators to power essential equipment such as oxygen equipment.
There are also practical challenges. Generators aren’t cheap, selling at big box stores for more than $1,000. Once the initial fuel supply runs out — as happened in parts of western North Carolina in the immediate aftermath of Helene — it can be difficult and expensive to get more to find And the machines are noisy, potentially harming health and creating more stress for aid workers and the people they serve.
Elizabeth Ouzts
Heegaard saw these challenges firsthand in Guinea in 2016 when he responded to an Ebola outbreak. As a paramedic, his job was to train local residents to collect blood samples and store them in generator-powered refrigerators that would be driven by motorbike to the city of Conakry for testing. He had a grant to give cash reimbursements to the lab tech for the fuel.
“It’s already so difficult, and the idea of doing a cash refund in a super-poor rural country for gas generators seems really difficult,” Heegaard recalled. “I heard about solar refrigerators. I asked the local logistician in Conakry: ‘Are these things even possible?’.”
The next day the logistician said they were. They can be installed within a month. “It was just a no-brainer,” Heegaard said. “The only reason why we didn’t do it is the grant wasn’t written that way.”
‘Game changes for a reaction’
Two years later, the Footprint Project was born from that experience. With just seven full-time staff members, the group of workers pulls together in the wake of a disaster, along with local solar companies, nonprofits and others, to gather supplies and distribute as much as they can.
They are deploying solar-powered charging stations, water filtration systems, and other so-called climate technology to communities that need it most—starting with those without power, water, or a generator at all, and extending to those who want to offset their fossil fuel burning.
The group has now built nearly 50 such solar-powered microgrids in the region, from Lake Junaluska to Linville Falls, more than it ever provided in the wake of a disaster. The recipients range from volunteer fire stations to trailer parks to an art collective in West Asheville.
Mike Talyad, a photographer who launched the collective last year to support artists of color, teamed up with the Grassroots Aid Partnership, a national nonprofit, to fill relief gaps in the wake of Helene. “The whole city was trying to figure it out,” he said.
Elizabeth Ouzts
Solar panels from Footprint that initially powered a water filter have now largely replaced the generators for the team’s food trucks, which last week provided 1,000 meals a day. “When we did the switch,” Talyad said, “it was at a time when gas was still questionable.”
Last week, the team at Footprint also provided six solar panels, a Tesla battery and a charging station to relocate a noisy generator at a retirement community in South Asheville.
The device powered a system that drew water from a pond, filtered it and made it drinkable. Picking up their jugs of drinking water, a steady stream of residents huffed and puffed as the solar panels were installed, sighing with relief as the noise of the generator subsided.
“Most responders don’t play with solar microgrids because it’s better for the environment,” Heegaard said. “They play with it, because if they can turn off their generator 12 hours a day, that literally means half the fuel savings. Some of them spend tens of thousands of dollars a month on diesel or gas. It’s game-changing for a response.”
‘Show up for their neighbors’
Footprint’s robust relief effort and the diversity of its beneficiaries is due in part to the scale of Helene’s destruction, with more than 1 million in North Carolina alone initially losing power.
“It’s really hard to put into words what’s happening out there right now,” said Matt Abele, the executive director of the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association, who visited in the early days after the storm. “It’s just the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever seen – whole motorhome parks just completely gone.”
But the magnitude of the response is also due to Footprint’s approach to aid, which is rooted in connections with grassroots groups, government organizations and the local solar industry. Everyone worked together for the relief effort.
“We’ve been incredibly overwhelmed by the positive response we’ve seen from the clean energy community,” Abele said, “both from an equipment donation standpoint and a financial resources standpoint.”
About four hours east of the devastation in western North Carolina, Greentech Renewables Raleigh requested and stored solar panels and other goods. It also raises money for products that are harder to get for free – like PV wire and batteries. Then he asks the supplies west.
“We have bodies, we have trucks, we have relationships,” said Shasten Jolley, the manager at the company, which stores and sells inventory to a variety of installers. “So, we’re trying to use all of those things to help.”
The cargo is delivered to Mars Hill, a tiny college town about 20 miles north of Asheville that was virtually untouched by Helene. Frank Johnson, the owner of a robotics company, volunteered his 110,000 square foot facility for storage through a local regional government organization.
Johnson is just one example of how people in the region have stepped up to help each other, said Abele, who is based in Raleigh.
“You can see when you’re out there,” he said, “that so many people in the community get by by showing up for their neighbors.”
‘Available for next response’
To be sure, Footprint’s operations are not seamless at every turn. For example, most of the donated solar panels earmarked for the South Asheville retirement community didn’t work, a fact the installers learned once they made the 40-minute drive in the morning and tried to connect them to the connect system. They returned later in the afternoon with functioning units, but then faced the challenge of what to do with the broken ones.
“It’s solar waste,” Heegaard said. “The last site we did yesterday had the same problem. Now we have to figure out how to recover it.”
It’s also not uncommon for the microgrids to stop working, Heegaard said, due to understandable operator error, such as leaving them running all night to provide heat.
But above all, the problem for Footprint is scale. It is a small organization among large relief groups and simply does not have the bandwidth for a larger response. With Milton immediately following on the heels of Helene, Heegaard’s group made the difficult choice to settle in North Carolina.
With climate-driven weather disasters poised to increase, the organization hopes to entice the biggest, best-resourced players in disaster relief to begin routinely using solar microgrids in their efforts.
As power is slowly restored across the region, with just over 5,000 left without electricity, there is also the question of what comes next.
While there is a parallel conversation going on between advocates and policy makers about making microgrids and distributed solar a more permanent feature of the grid, Footprint also hopes to inspire some of that change from the ground up. Maybe the volunteer fire station decides to put solar panels on its roof when it rebuilds, for example.
“We can change the conversation around resilience and recovery by pointing directly to something that worked when the lights were out and debris was in the street,” Heegaard said.
As for the actual Footprint gear, the dream is to create “lending libraries” in places like Asheville, to drive in and out of community events and disaster relief.
“The solar trailer or the microgrid or the water maker that went to Burnsville Elementary right after the storm — that can be recycled and used to power the music stage or the movie in the park,” Heegaard said. “Then that equipment is here, it’s being used, and it’s available for the next response, whether it’s in Knoxville or Atlanta or South Carolina.”
