NORFOLK, Va. — The contrast between old and new is easy to see at Wesley Union AME Zion Church in Norfolk.
The historic church on Johnson Street has been around for decades, but the ground solar mounts sitting in the field beside it, have only existed for about three years.
“We got a lot of questions [from] people just walking by, especially during the construction time [so much so] we had to put an informational sign out on the fence,” says Brandon Praileau.
Brandon Praileau is the church's pastor and the one who leaned into green.
We first talked about his decision to go solar back in 2022.
“Once we did it, I was like hey, I learned so much about it – there's some community work that can be done here that can definitely benefit underserved communities,” he says.
Praileau says that led him to Solar United Neighbors (SUN), a national nonprofit that focuses on solar advocacy. Praileau was just selected as the program director for Virginia.
“In a million years I could have never thought that I would be doing something like that then and now doing something like this on a much broader scale,” he tells me.
“As a matter of fact, even before going solar I couldn't have told you much about solar at all.”
Now he’s spreading awareness from the highways of Norfolk to the country roads of Surry.
Surry is where I met Sherri Powers. She says SUN helped her go solar in 2019 after she attended an informational event at William and Mary.
“People from all over the state came to learn more about solar, and they had various, sort of workshop sessions where you could go and learn more about specific types of applications and, you know, [the] impact [of solar] and that sort of thing,” she says.
She says the eventual cost savings enticed her as well as the environmental impact. Powers was fortunate enough to pay for the installation herself, but she says the access of information from SUN was invaluable.
“I have found them very, very helpful and very informative when I’ve reached out to them,” she says.
Powers says she will see the return on her investment over the span of nine to ten years and it's worth the wait.
However, back in Norfolk, I asked Praileau about that because not everyone has the money or the time. In fact, people are worried about buying groceries and paying rent. Installing solar may be too big a burden.
“It can be especially when you look at low- and moderate-income communities, right? Typically, that income is just not there, or those resources are just not there for them to be able to make that commitment to go solar even if they have a desire to. But thanks to the IRA, the EPA is getting ready to announce some seven billion dollars in funding and a lot of this money will be flowing to low- and moderate-income communities as resources to help them go solar,” Praileau says.
Praileau says a big part of his role at SUN is changing the narrative and connecting consumers to resources, like Solar United Neighbor’s free help desk.
"Different consumers have different needs, they have different roadblocks or different challenges they may have to face as far as going solar,” he says.
"[Let’s say] you've met with installers, but it doesn't make sense to you. Our help desk is here to make sense of that.
People can schedule 15-minute appointments and ask any questions they have for free and without commitment.
“We believe that that is going to be a good way to introduce low- and moderate-income communities to solar,” he says.
Who could have known that this journey all started from Praileau wanting to make a small change in his Huntersville community.
“I believe that we are only as good as the people in which we serve,” he says.
