"Solar Mike" Arenson teaching a Rising Sun solar energy workshop at Amesti School in Watsonville, California

Sky Power Institute is proud to announce the first solar power (photovoltaic, or "PV") project on a public building in Santa Cruz County. Through the effort of many generous Sky Power supporters, and with the support of our local school board and school district administration, funds are being raised to begin the pilot installation of a solar-electric power system on local schools.

As installation begins, students at the schools will follow the process with an integrated, thematic energy curriculum that includes physics, math, and earth system sciences as well as political economy and communication skills in language arts and multimedia arts. Students will monitor and analyze the performance of the system, and will report to all of us (including other schools and communities around the nation and globe) on its positive economic and environmental impacts.

At Sky Power Institute, we hope to demonstrate that local, grassroots, small scale solar energy projects work, and to help other leaders model the path toward a brighter future.

Power generation is the most polluting industry of today's planetary civilization, contributing heavily to impending global climate change problems, as well as to political unrest. Yet, the technology is available TODAY to provide well for the needs of everyone on the planet. It's high time for our communities to start taking action to bring about practical policy changes, actualizing the "think globally, act locally" refrain with a small but real part of the solution to our world-wide environmental crisis. We cannot afford to wait for politicians and the multinational energy industry to effect the changes that are urgently needed in our energy policies.

It is essential that the cost of solar cells be brought down to affordable levels, sooner than business-as-usual will allow. That will require widespread vision and action. Non-profit funding for PV installations on public buildings (such as schools, hospitals, parking structures, prisons, and government buildings), while the cost of solar cells is still relatively expensive, will shift the economy of scale, so that production costs and price reductions can be realized. In this way, communities can finally dislodge the dominating stranglehold with which the fossil-fuel industry and lobby have held hostage the world's environment and future climate for so long. Make no mistake about it: The world is deeply addicted to the wrong energy path, and it is already quite late to start turning things around. (If you liked El Nino, you'll love what's coming!)

We urgently need to establish a whole network of public and private installations of solar (and other renewable) energy stations - a "distributed utility", or "community sky power plant"!

You can help. Sky Power Institute is seeking funding for the installation of the first energy stations in our "community sky power plants". The success of these shining examples will lead to more, as people "see the light".

To build a one-kilowatt* solar array with state-of-the-art monitoring hardware for educational purposes, we need approximately $10,000. We've already raised several thousand, along with major donations of equipment, and additional funds from a state solar energy grant program. We have a good beginning, but your support is still needed.

Sky Power Institute, in cooperation with Ecology Action of Santa Cruz, is accepting donations to support the implementation of our Solar Schools Rooftops Project. Please contact Sky Power Institute Director, Joe Jordan, or Virginia Johnson, Executive Director of Ecology Action of Santa Cruz for more information on how to make your tax-deductible contribution to the Solar Schools Rooftops Project.

We hope you will come visit again to watch this initiative grow!

* (One kilowatt is about enough to power a couple of hallways of efficient lights.)