Running Jerry Shumate’s array of medical equipment consumes a lot of electricity, and costs a pretty penny, but a new solar array installed on his roof Friday will ease that burden.
For the disabled North Long Beach man who has undergone 11 surgeries after a gruesome accident at the auto shop he worked at in downtown Long Beach, any cost savings bring relief, especially as he continues to battle leukemia picked up from repeated X-rays and MRIs.
Shumate qualified for a solar panel installation program run by the nonprofit GRID Alternatives, which on Friday brought volunteers from the Los Angeles Trade Technical College to Shumate’s house to install 10 panels.
“Even with changing my lifestyle, I couldn’t get my electrical bill under $200 a month,” Shumate said. “This is supposed to help radically.”
The panels won’t cost Shumate a dime: Volunteers installed them and the panels were donated by SunPower, a solar manufacturing company. GRID Alternatives estimates the 2.8-kilowatt solar panel setup will save Shumate $23,700 over the 30-year lifespan of the panels.
GRID Alternatives has installed solar panels for 716 families in the greater Los Angeles area. In the coming years, distributed solar installations like the one at Shumate’s house are going to be an important slice of the renewable-energy pie, especially with California’s requirement to have 33 percent of all electricity generated by renewable sources by 2020.
The state has also enacted requirements to reduce green house gas emissions – such as carbon dioxide – to 1990 levels by 2020. Those rules are cutting edge by national standards, and served as the model for rules proposed last week by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA rules require all states to cut carbon emissions by 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. How those federal standards will jibe with California’s standards is unclear because the two use different measuring sticks for emissions. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, who attended Friday’s installation, said the discrepancy shouldn’t pose a problem.
“California is where we want other states to move towards, so they’ll be just fine,” she told reporters.
GRID Alternatives taps into solar power not just by offering low-income families an extra source of electricity with the free panels, but also by training volunteers in installation skills. Ten students and graduates from the trade college installed the solar panels Friday.
JoJo Collins, who is a year away from graduating from LATTC, volunteers with GRID Alternatives both for the job skills and because the solar installations are good for the environment.
“I plan on having kids. I just want this Earth to be able to sustain us,” Collins said. “Solar is one of the markets that’s actually growing. When it comes to other industries like the housing market, that’s going down, but solar is growing.”
Contact the writer: aorlowski@lbregister.com or 562-310-7684
