Methow Valley Methodist Church PV + BESS

From the Methow Valley News:

Methodist Church to get solar panels, thanks to teen grant writer

December 5, 2024 by Ralph Schwartz

Photo by Ralph Schwartz Since the roof of Methow Valley United Methodist Church is not suitable for solar panels, the array will be installed on the ground, likely in an unused parking lot.

Pastor’s daughter will help establish ‘resiliency hub’

Methow Valley United Methodist Church (MVUMC) will get solar panels next spring, to power the church during community emergencies and effectively eliminate its electricity bill.

Much of the credit for this boon goes to the pastor’s daughter, a high schooler who wrote the successful application for a $667,135 grant that will pay for the solar panel and battery system.

The specifics of the array are still to be determined, but some 148 panels could be installed on an unused church parking lot. They should generate more than enough power to meet the church’s annual electricity needs, said Michiel Zuidweg, who has mentored Juliana Robinson on the church solar project as part of the Independent Learning Center’s internship program. Juliana is a junior at the ILC.

While the church generates its own electricity thanks to Juliana’s project, the community will stand to benefit as well. Outfitted with the solar array and large batteries that will store some of the electricity generated by the panels, the church will become a resiliency hub for Methow Valley residents during power outages, said Leigh Ann Robinson, Juliana’s mother and MVUMC pastor.

‘Exceptional’ student

The adults working side by side with Juliana speak highly of her work.

“Juliana is exceptional,” said Mary Jane Perry, a valley resident with grant-writing expertise who had assisted with a grant application for a similar solar-plus-battery system at the Twisp Civic Building and Emergency Operations Center. 

“I provided Juliana with my drafts and data, and she took it from there,” Perry said. “She is an excellent writer and made the narrative her own.”

Juliana also has been working closely with Michiel “Mac” Zuidweg of MZ Solar Consulting in Winthrop. She said Zuidweg gave her “hundreds of pages of reading” about solar power, so she would have the base knowledge to help him design the church’s system and write the grant proposal.

“There’s a lot to know on these systems,” Zuidweg said. “There’s a lot to coordinate. I could tell when she did her presentation [at the ILC], she understood the concepts.”

Perry pointed out that Zuidweg had Juliana do some of the math and science work for the grant, calculating solar angle and potential power production per month, based on the number of panels the project would employ.

“It’s not the grant writing that she is really excited about,” Leigh Ann Robinson said, regarding her daughter’s interests. “It’s the solar and the engineering side.”

Competitive field

The Washington state Department of Commerce announced its grant award to MVUMC and other projects on Sept. 12. In all, the agency awarded $37 million to 46 proposals across the state during its summer funding round.

Most of the grant money came from the 2021 Climate Commitment Act. Through the act, the state has generated more than $2 billion so far by auctioning emission allowances to the state’s biggest carbon polluters.

While the pool of money for these grants is significant, the demand is high, too. Various proposals totaling about $150 million competed for the $37 million in available funding, Zuidweg said.

“It’s not easy being a grant writer,” he said. “The likelihood of getting this was low.”

Clean-energy grants from the Department of Commerce also paid for the solar power system at the Twisp Civic Building, along with the newly installed panels at the Winthrop Library. Zuidweg has been directly involved in all three projects.

The arrays at the Winthrop Library and at the church will be the two largest solar power projects on the Okanogan County Electrical Cooperative (OCEC) grid, Zuidweg said. The library’s system is expected to produce about 107,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity a year, while the church should generate 92,980 kWh a year. For comparison, the average single-family home in the Western United States uses about 10,330 kWh a year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Zuidweg estimates that the library and church projects both should generate at least 100% of each building’s net energy needs over the course of a full year, with each system building up an energy credit in the sunny months while drawing some power from the OCEC grid in the winter.

Photo courtesy Methow Valley United Methodist Church High school junior Juliana Robinson wrote the application for a $667,135 grant to install solar panels at Methow Valley United Methodist Church.

Resiliency hub

The solar-plus-battery system at the church will enable MVUMC to open its doors during extended power outages in the valley, Juliana and Leigh Ann Robinson said.

The church already shelters people on a short-term basis, maybe from noon to 5 p.m., on hot and smoky days, or when the power is out in other parts of the valley, Leigh Ann Robinson said. The future resiliency hub will have more staffing, however, and the church’s kitchen will be commercially certified so it can be used to prepare meals.

Juliana will seek to partner with other valley organizations, to help operate the church’s resiliency hub. She has already surveyed church members and others in the community, to gather input on what the hub should look like. Figuring out the specifics of the resiliency hub will be Juliana’s senior-year capstone project.

“The Methodist Church has been in the valley for well over 100 years,” Leigh Ann Robinson said. “The people in the church really have a heart for this community and finding ways to serve the community. This project is growing out of that. … That’s part of who we are.”

Juliana’s principal at the ILC, Sara Mounsey, said the school’s internship program gives students like Juliana a taste of real-world success.

“Not only is the outcome a testament to how real-world learning can enable youth to become agents of social change, but the experience influenced Juli’s post high school aspirations,” Mounsey said. “We’re incredibly grateful to Mac, along with all the other mentors who invite our students to work and learn alongside them.”

“I would definitely love to go to college,” Juliana said, when asked about her plans after graduation. “I’m thinking about studying probably electrical engineering or mathematics, or something in those general fields — math, physics, engineering,” she said.

As her mentor sees it, Juliana has what it takes to succeed in her chosen field.

“She’s super smart,” Zuidweg said. “She works hard.”