Hope Farms gets moment in sun
Urban farm in Houston’s Sunnyside debuts solar energy system to power core operations
Gracie Cavnar wanted solar panels to keep the produce-filled refrigerators running if there was a power outage at her nonprofit urban farm. She soon realized the panels could provide another needed asset on the seven acre Hope Farms site in Sunnyside: shade.
“We built this beautiful pergola off of our barn, and the solar panels will shade the entire pergola,” Cavnar said on a sunny 100-degree Houston afternoon. “So they’re capturing the sun, and then they’re creating really critically needed shade.”
Solar energy has exploded in Texas over the past few years, with installed capacity nearly doubling in the last year. The Solar Energy Industries Association reports Texas has more than 18,000 megawatts of utility-scale solar farms and individual home installations, enough to power 3.6 million homes on a hot summer day, according to the state’s grid operator.
Cavnar started Hope Farms in 2016 as part of her Recipe for Success Foundation, both born out of her passion for combating childhood obesity and increasing access to healthy foods. Farmer training, cooking classes and educational programs for kids are all available at the farm, and it holds a market open to the public on Saturday mornings.
The pandemic delayed Cavnar’s plans to generate electricity for some of the farm’s main buildings with solar energy, but later this week the sun and batteries will power the composting toilets, main kitchen and small store at Hope Farms, with the panels shading the walkway between them.
There are several options for
installing solar panels, and Cavnar specifically wanted her system to operate independently of the state’s electric grid. That means instead of feeding excess power not used by the buildings to the grid, the panels would send it to a system of batteries.
She enlisted Gabriel Cuadra, who teaches a new solar installation continuing education course at Houston Community College and who happens to live in an off-grid house himself powered by solar energy. At first, he said, they were just trying to power the farm’s three composting toilets.
“Gracie’s requirements were fairly unique,” Cuadra said at an event Tuesday unveiling the solar power system. “She had solar panels already that she wanted to make use of, but the solar panels could do a lot more than just the new (electricity) load for the loo, and so we didn’t want to shortchange the system.”
The electricity load, or the amount of power consumed, is not that high in general at Hope Farms. The farm uses around 4 kilowatt hours of electricity a day on average, consumption that includes the buildings about to be powered by solar and the farm’s water well, which is connected to the grid. That compares to the roughly 30 kilowatt hours used per day by the average home in 2021, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
A portion of a $128,000 grant awarded to Hope Farms from retail electricity provider Green Mountain Energy, whose parent company is Houstonbased NRG Energy, funded the solar system through a program called the Sun Club. Stacy Mehlhoff, executive director for Green Mountain’s Sun Club, said the grant also
“Instead of fighting Mother Nature. We’re collaborating with her.” Gracie Cavnar, founder of Hope Farms
funded a rainwater collection system for the farm.
Overall, Mehlhoff said the Sun Club program has awarded grants for sustainability projects to more than 150 nonprofits in the eight states Green Mountain operates in. Customers, employees and Green Mountain all donate to the Sun Club fund, she said, which has doled out $13 million since the program started in 2002.
Back at Hope Farms, Cavnar said the solar system coming online this week is just the beginning. In the future she hopes to also power its well with solar panels and is brainstorming how to potentially use that installation to shade crops.
“Instead of fighting Mother Nature,” Cavnar said, “We’re collaborating with her.”