Aro Solar

Aro Solar

Project 2014-04-01 18:50:54 +1300

Collab Project with Smart Energy Challenge

Wellington City Council is teaming up with some of Wellington's brightest social entrepreneurs from Enspiral, Generation Zero and PledgeMe, to bring local Smart Energy projects to life. They've joined forces to find and support community-led projects designed to reduce energy use and increase clean energy in Wellington. Wellington City Council will match dollar for dollar the target amount of each successful project. This means that every dollar you pledge towards these projects will turn into two dollars! Let's get smart energy humming in Wellington.

We made it!!

Success! We reached our target. Whoo-hoo. And you can still Pledge right up until Saturday night at 11pm. Check out our 'Updates' tab for what the extra money will be used for.

What we're doing:

We're using the amazing medium of crowdfunding to bring the power of solar to the community!

Community centres like Aro Valley do great work in organising positive programmes and bringing people together but have limited funds and are burdened by expensive energy bills. Furthermore, people can often feel powerless to tackle the big environmental issues that we face today. We think Solar panels on community buildings provides an inclusive, viable and visible step towards local solutions - empowering people and catalysing change.

Solar energy is widely recognised as one of the easiest ways to produce your own renewable electricity (and avoid consuming energy produced by burning fossil fuels). However, the up front costs of solar energy mean that it's way beyond the budget of most of us.

If we band together we can create 100% clean renewable energy generation in our neighbourhoods – on the places that use electricity when the sun is shining - our community buildings, local businesses, you name it. Any power they generate and don’t use is fed back in to the grid, powering our homes too. Even better, the money they save on power bills can be fed back in to community projects.

We’re running a pilot – we've partnered with the Aro Valley Community Centre to crowd fund their transition to solar power. You can help these great people to drastically reduce their power bills, to be more self-reliant (and take a step towards resiliency), and to contribute clean renewable electricity to their community.

The Details

As part of this pilot we are putting a touchscreen display of the system on the Community Centre wall - so people can see, interactively, what the solar panels are saving the Community Centre day by day.

All the technicalities are sussed (thanks Right House!) - the costs of the PV panels, the installation on the Community Centre roof by 'RightHouse', the amount the Centre will save per year on their electricity bills. To cover all our costs we need to crowdfund $4,500 on Pledgeme. The really sweet deal is that Wellington City Council have committed to match fund our target $ for $ - meaning anything you pledge is effectively doubled.

We could help you to re-power your community centre or your local café next. But first we need your help with this one.

(Share and Support us on Facebook and Twitter ‘AroSolar’. See coverage of us in the media: The Wellingtonian 20 March 2014 )

Thanks

Our everlasting thanks and adoration to Boberg Films (Jason Boberg - Director, Samora O'Neill - Composor and Sean McGrath - Post production) as well as Stephen Templar - Logo Illustrator, Wellington City Council and the Smart Energy Challenge team (including support from Enspiral, Generation Zero and Pledge Me, and corporate supporters Deloitte, Kiwibank, and NZ Post), to Right House and the Aro Valley Community Council, to all the performers who gave generously of their time and talent to play on the Sun Stage at the Aro Fair - the Jon Lemmon Band, the Wend, Wet Wings, Djangle, and Kate Benge). A special mention also goes to the children from the Aro Valley Preschool who gamely participated in the filming of the video - thank you to Elina, Sylvia, Sashank, Sashwat, Dante and Krish. You guys were great. Thank you also to the parents of these children for giving permission for them to be involved! Last but never least, a huge thank you to all friends and family who have supported us on the journey so far. We're looking forward to the rest of it!

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