LaPLACE, La. (AP) – Sonia St. Cyr, an enthusiastic church volunteer, lost something she loved during the blackout caused by Hurricane Ida — his independence, which is afforded by the electric wheelchair he expertly maneuvers through the city’s bumpy sidewalks.
“After Ida I stayed at home,” said St. Cyr, who has multiple sclerosis. She did her best to conserve energy in her wheelchair, walking alone to the end of the block or sitting on her porch after the storm made landfall on Aug. 29.
It was another 10 days before every habitable home in New Orleans had power restored. With the lights off and nothing open in his Broadmoor neighborhood of New Orleans, “It wasn’t fun.”
A project that has been launched in southeast Louisiana aims to help people like St. Cyr that are especially vulnerable during extended blackouts as a warming climate produces more extreme weather, such as larger and wetter hurricanes.
“Community lighthouses,” equipped with solar panels on the roof and a battery pack to store energy, can serve as electricity hubs after a disaster, allowing residents to recharge batteries, power up phones or store temperature-sensitive medications .
They are sponsored by Together New Orleans, a non-partisan network of churches and groups trying to solve community problems.
Organizer Broderick Bagert said they felt “powerless and helpless” as the city struggled to provide basic things like trash collection after Ida. They realized that local governments could not manage everything by themselves.
“You can spend a lot of time saying … ‘Why not?'” Bagert said. “But you start to realize that the real question is ‘Why don’t we?'”
More than energy hardware, each lighthouse needs a team of volunteers to study its areas, find out who has health problems and who needs refrigerated medication or depends on electric wheelchairs for mobility. Although people with means can evacuate before a hurricane, about one in four people live in poverty in New Orleans, and not everyone can afford to flee. Hurricanes are also forming faster due to climate change, making it more likely that people will be trapped in a disaster zone.
Each lighthouse should be able to connect with all vulnerable people in its neighborhood within 24 hours of an outage, Bagert said.
“This is not about batteries and solar panels. There are other batteries and solar panels made by the hand of God. And that is called human personality,” said the Rev. JC Richardson, pastor of Cornerstone United Methodist Church , during an event that announced one of the locations.
The pilot phase calls for 24 locations, 16 in New Orleans and eight elsewhere in Louisiana. They have raised nearly $11 million of the projected $13.8 million cost with help from the Greater New Orleans Foundation, the city, federal funding and other donations.
Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, director of Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness, said systems that can operate independently of the power grid, often called microgrids, are becoming more popular as businesses and communities address climate change by trying to reduce their carbon footprint. or ensure backup electricity.
“We are waiting more extreme weather We expect more stress on the grid,” he said. It’s especially important to have these centers in places with high levels of chronic disease, where outages can take a huge toll, he said. Keeping them on could mean fewer people in ambulances.
Associated Press analysis found that weather-related outages doubled over the past two decades. Louisiana is one of three states experiencing a 50% increase in the length of outages.
Pastor Neil Bernard plans to help many more people at his New Wine Christian Fellowship in the New Orleans suburb of LaPlace. The church is a designated shelter of last resort in the parish of Sant Joan Baptista, which was badly affected during Ida.
The roar of generators is a common sound after a hurricane, and the parish government provided one to the church, but they are noisy, carbon monoxide fumes are dangerous, and fuel can be in short supply when storm damage prevent transport.
Keeping the New Wine generator powered and maintained was a challenge after Ida. Now the church will benefit year-round: Once the lighthouse is installed, Bernard expects to save $3,000 a month on energy bills.
Hurricanes aren’t the only extreme weather that sparks interest in microgrids. Experts say there is growing interest in California, where utilities sometimes preemptively deactivating power lines when conditions are ripe for wildfires so your team doesn’t start a fire.
Ice and wind storms, as well as tropical weather, can cause blackouts in places like Baltimore, which launched a similar project in 2015. The city has four locations fully equipped with solar power systems and battery backups, and aims to to have 30 in three years, the city’s climate and resilience planner, Aubrey Germ, said in an email.
“Some of the systems have performed well during power outages, allowing hubs to provide continuity of essential services such as cell phone charging, cooling and information to residents in need of support,” Germ wrote.
CrescentCare lost $250,000 in drugs and vaccines after Ida. The New Orleans-based health center had two generators when Hurricane Ida hit, but one failed and they couldn’t get enough fuel to run the other, CEO Noel Twilbeck said.
Now, the center will serve as one of the first “lighthouses” in the area.
The solar panels are designed to withstand winds of 160 mph, said Pierre Moses, the president of 127 Energy, which finances and develops renewable energy projects. He is also a technical consultant for the Community Lighthouse effort.
Direct Relief, one of the donors funding the lighthouse project, didn’t set out to be an energy provider: it started funding microgrids after it was repeatedly asked to pay for generators and fuel after hurricanes.
The humanitarian aid group’s president and CEO, Thomas Tighe, sees the value now that medical records are computerized and more people need power-dependent devices at home, such as dialysis and oxygen machines.
“You’ve set things up assuming there’s always going to be power, and that presumption is no longer valid in many places,” he said.