SFCC students put skills to work on Habitat home
Class installs solar panels
On almost any day in Santa Fe, the sun glitters across a rich blue canvas, with only a few cotton clouds dotting the horizon. In addition to the illuminated landscape, sunburns, freckles and obscure tan lines are evidence of the sun’s power in the New Mexican high desert.
Atop an adobe house on Oshara Boulevard on Tuesday, a group of nine students and two teachers from Santa Fe Community College wore widebrimmed hats, baseball caps and thick sunscreen to ward off UV rays while installing solar panels on a Habitat for Humanity home.
Among them was Annie Padilla, a 23-year-old woman with sneakers — not the typical look at a construction site. Padilla, one of two women at the Habitat site in Oshara Village, not far from the college, said the opportunity was a chance to volunteer and help her career.
“We’ve been doing a lot of classwork this whole time, but the hands-on experience … it sunk in more,” she said.
Padilla graduated Saturday with a degree in solar energy, earning her second Associate in Applied Science from the college. And she’s not done yet: She plans to continue studying various environmental fields, including the college’s agricultural and energy auditing programs.
However, because solar energy has so much potential in Santa Fe — a city that averages more than 300 sunny days a year — Padilla is most interested in exploring the strength of the sun.
“It’s an emerging thing,” she said, adding that she believes the college has helped influence the city’s efforts to expand the use of solar power. Since the college began its solar program,
Padilla said, “more and more projects have arose.”
Padilla, along with peers, began the solar installation process for the Habitat for Humanity home Monday when they established a safety plan with the help of their teachers, Xubi Wilson and Brian Combs. Tuesday, they connected microinverters to modules for solar installation, and Wednesday they planned to complete electrical hookups — in total earning each student one credit hour of lab time.
Wilson, coordinator of renewable energy programs at SFCC, said the college is among the best for this form of education. He hopes projects like the one with Habitat for Humanity help make solar energy the statewide standard.
“The opportunity here is enormous,” Wilson said, adding that New Mexico is ranked as one of the best states in the country for solar power potential, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. “If we could put solar on every single house in the state, we could eliminate our need for fossil fuels.”
Wilson believes Santa Fe is headed in the right direction, finally.
“I had hoped growing up that we’d be all solar by now,” he said, adding that Oregon’s solar initiative, which provides tax credits and rebates, is “much more progressive and affordable” than Santa Fe; California recently passed an ordinance that says every new home built in the state will use solar power; and New Mexico’s gubernatorial candidate Jeff Apodaca recently proposed a $1 billion budget for renewable energy production.
“The solar industry is expanding,” Wilson said. “The trajectory is growth and expansion.”
And for that reason, he believes it’s important for his students to get involved in real-life experiences. “It’s an example of start to finish — we’re going through an entire installation process,” Wilson said of the Habitat for Humanity project. “They’re going to remember this for the rest of their lives.”
While it’s the first time the SFCC students have been involved in such a project, it’s not the first time Habitat for Humanity has had a volunteer crew install a solar power system on a home.
Rob Lochner, construction director for Santa Fe Habitat for Humanity, said the group started the solar initiative just over a year ago, and all houses built by the nonprofit organization will require solar panels.
“It’s really twofold for us: We want to be responsible stewards of the Earth. And we want homeowners to reduce their monthly utility bills,” Lochner said. Habitat for Humanity homes in Santa Fe, built for low-income families who struggle to afford basic necessities, he said, will now use 18 percent less energy than the standard home.
For Padilla, her motivation is to serve people in need — in a way that also aligns with her passion for the environment and helps inspire other women to get involved. “I want to do something that changes the future,” she said. “That quote that says, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’ — that’s how I try to live my life.”