Our Church as a Resource

Our church has long been a resource for the community.  It housed the preschool for a time and was once once where people came to vote.  Since Higher Grounds installed the DSL about 10 years ago with the Wifi router, it has become a resource for people who don't have Internet service at home to access the Internet.  

The use of our church's Wifi Hotspot only increased when several years ago, smartphones like the iPhone added the capability to make cell phone calls over Wifi.  People began coming to our church to make cellphone calls because as most of us know cell phone coverage is sketchy at best up here on the mountain.  This capability is even more significant when we loose power, causing people who have Comcast to loose their Internet.  Even people who still have land lines, loose the ability to make phone calls when they've converted their traditional phones to wireless handsets.

Since the fire, Todd, one of our neighbors, invested in repairing our water tank to enable our church to be a backup resource for water to fill up 5 gallon jugs to take home to use for cooking or even to flush their toilets.

During the fire evacuation our church was offered a Tesla power wall to provide a charging station and essential resources to our community while we were out of power.    This has opened our eyes to the how our church has an opportunity to be a backup power resource to our community when we have power outages.  We recently received a quote for installing solar panels and backup power to our community.  Roughly 1/3 of the cost could be covered by grants.

In the meantime, over the past few weeks, we invested in two Yeti 150 lithium batteries to power the DSL router when we have power outages.  It was a great success enabling a half a dozen neighbors to utilize the Wifi Hotspot when their power was out at home.  Unfortunately, this requires someone to be here, charge the battery on their home generator and swap out the battery every 12 hours.   Installing a solar battery power system for our church will enable backup communication without requiring a person to manage it.

There are many other benefits to having solar backup power installed.  Our church could then offer a charging station for small devices to our community as well as Wifi power.  With so many coffee shops closed due to Covid, it is a challenge for people to charge their devices.  Many people are left to sitting in their cars and idling them with their devices plugged in to recharge them for work and school.  Of course some people have offices in town or have friends and family who are willing to allow them to use their systems, but not everyone is so fortunate.  Yes, there are co-working locations, but only people who can afford to pay the premium to become a member are afforded that privilege.

P.G.&E hosted three resource centers during the most recent planned power outage.  One of them was a church.  All three of them are 30 minutes away.  Our community had homed with the many trees that were removed after the fire that we'd have fewer outages.  The past few weeks have proven that we will continue to have outages despite the recent tree removals.