Community Power Accelerator Testimonials (Text Version)

This is the text version of the video Community Power Accelerator Testimonials.

This video shows solar developers who have benefited from the Community Power Accelerator prize, platform, and learning opportunities talking about their experiences.

[Music plays]

[Text on Screen: Community Power Accelerator: U.S. Department of Energy]

>>Narrator: The Community Power Accelerator is more than a platform—it’s a catalyst for communities and organizations seeking to deploy solar energy that brings meaningful benefits to households.

[Text on screen: Developers, Investors, Philanthropies, Community-Based Organizations]

Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Community Power Accelerator connects developers, investors, philanthropies, and community-based organizations.

This creates an ecosystem of partners that work together to get more equity-focused solar projects financed and deployed. 

This program is working to actualize the potential of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and other federal programs supporting clean energy for U.S. households. 

>>Joseph Smith, ADL Solutions: Two years ago, the community power accelerator totally changed my direction.  

And from that point on, that really sparked the interest to be a developer, and it really gave me the avenue to actually achieve it, you know? I went from just being an installer to a community solar developer today, so I owe it all to the Community Power Accelerator prize.

>>Narrator: Project developers can take advantage of technical assistance provided by experts in the solar industry to solve technical challenges and get their projects ready to go. 

>>Brad Leon, Solar United National: It's really given us a chance to get started, between the three partners that we have, we really needed that seed money to be able to get this off the ground as well as the targeted focus for what we wanted to try to do. It really did help us to narrow down the focus of the problem we were trying to solve.

>>Al Beatty, Resilience Education Training Innovation (RETI) Center: The financing and launching our first on the ground projects is a huge milestone for us because it's going to start to produce that internal revenue that we can then use to continue the programming beyond the life of CPA

>>Jinean Robinson, RETI Center: And really the ecosystem of advisors, experts, even peers, has been great, so being able to see to kind of grow it together—we're kind of growing an industry together.

>>Narrator: To deploy solar projects that benefit communities, developers need expertise, capacity, and access to predevelopment funds. The Community Power Accelerator helps them get there.

[Text on screen: Expertise, Capacity, Access to Predevelopment Funds]

>>Rob Wallace 458 Energy Solutions/Powerful 2: What this has done has allowed us to start up training program—programs—within Western Chicago.

The community accelerator has been a great source of knowledge, great networking, and also access to capital so I'm super excited about what they've done

>>Narrator: The work of the Community Power Accelerator has just begun.

As the clean energy transition continues to accelerate, the U.S. Department of Energy is focused on providing the meaningful benefits of renewable energy to those who need it most.  

>>Brad: We completed one training next month, we're doing another our first real project and training, and so we are so excited to have taken the time to learn what we needed to do and that's really what the community power prize has helped us do is learn. And now we're ready to act. 

>>Narrator: To learn more, and sign up for the Community Power Accelerator, visit communitypower.energy.gov