Ramdhari speaks at an event with New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul.
In this episode of the Contractor’s Corner podcast, we talk to nonprofit solar organization Solar One about its mission to bring solar + storage installations to at-risk communities in New York City. Solar One’s director of resilient solar, Angelica Ramdhari, was one of nine women recently honored by the Dept. of Energy with a C3E Award for her efforts in bringing affordable clean energy projects to low-income Brooklyn and Bronx neighborhoods, especially in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.
An edited portion of the interview is below, but be sure to listen to the full podcast for more insight on the gaps in the IRA that need to be filled to deploy significantly more low-income solar + storage projects.
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SPW: Can you start by telling me how you got into the solar industry in the first place?
Angelica Ramdhari, director of resilient solar, Solar One: When I started studying history at the University of Florida, I got involved with a club called the International Business Society and from there I became known as the ‘light bulb lady.’ I started exchanging traditional incandescent light bulbs for CFLs, and that’s really where my passion for anything with green energy started. It was just a whole transition from doing nonprofit weatherization activities to create carbon offsets to doing the same sort of thing in New York City later for Con Edison to reduce business expenses. And then the next big thing was solar, and then batteries, so continuously evolving to find meaningful ways to impact the environment.
How did you get started with Solar One?
Solar One has actually been around for a really long time. I got involved in 2014 through the company I was working for, AON Solar. The owner of this company said, ‘You really need to meet this [Solar One] guy, he wants to change the world like you do.’ So we met and we talked. I was really suspicious of the solar industry at that time, because everything was so expensive, and I was just learning how to implement solutions for Brooklyn brownstones, which is really complicated, because of all of the codes involved. But we got to talking, and it seemed like a really interesting way to see how you can bring affordable renewable energy to people that normally don’t get it, because either the codes are too complicated, it costs too much or you just don’t know about it. And Brooklyn was my community — is still my community. So I was very happy to start working on this opportunity.
2014 is when the Here Comes Solar program at Solar One started, and that is the technical assistance program where we help buildings figure out what they need to do to go solar. We can do procurement, we help with contractor selection and project implementation. We’re essentially the problem-solvers for getting solar on a building without a vested monetary interest, which is much needed in New York.
I saw Solar One also has a green energy training program. So you’re also involved in getting people trained to install solar?
Yeah, absolutely. You can’t provide technical assistance without having a workforce to go along with it. So our workforce model focuses on working with people who normally wouldn’t get this training, so people who haven’t gone to college or had this training at a technical school. We provide the hard skills you need to do the physical work not only for solar installations, but other green trades. And we work with a lot of different other nonprofits that focus on helping people who are harder to employ get into this industry, so it’s a win-win.
Tell me more about how Solar One’s business model works as a nonprofit. Where are you getting funding and how do you plan to expand?
We’ve been expanding pretty rapidly recently. With everything that happened during the pandemic, the need for renewable energy and all of this technology is very apparent, especially when we’re at home using more electricity. A lot of our funding is either through private grants or through eight different state agencies. The Here Comes Solar program started through a grant from NYSERDA. That program was started to really figure out if a “reverse Solarize” model could work. And we’ve gone after different funding opportunities through NYSERDA and other similar organizations that are trying to find a model to reduce costs for people. Our goal is to reduce the cost so more people can have renewable energy.