Illinois Grant Makers
When I was younger, nice restaurants were set up so that you could not see the kitchen. If you could see someone cooking food, you were in a diner. Diner food was cheaper and so you put up with the fact that you had to watch someone slaving over a hot stove. Then it all changed. At some point, it became a positive feature of the “nice†restaurants to show you the food preparation part of the restaurant. Kitchens were opened up and from most any seat it became very easy to see your food being prepared. Diners are still diners, but today most nice restaurants have open kitchens.
When I was younger, I always wondered what it was like to be in those rooms where grant decisions were made. Many applications come in and only a few are chosen. Who got to make that call and what factors did they use? What did the room look like? How did they decide on a deadline and how did they decide what the application should look like and how many questions would be asked?
In recent years, I have been invited to sit in on many of those “grant decision†meetings. They are not like the open kitchens, but I decided it might be interesting to take a picture of the group that decided what the Illinois Small PV Solar School grant program would look like, what the deadlines would be, how many schools would get grants and how much money would be given to each school. The picture above was taken in Illinois in a suburb of Chicago and the people in the picture are: Bob Romo, Lisa Starks, and Gabriella Martin of Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation and Mary Anne Emmons, PE, and Sharon Hillman and Janet Bieniak and Denise Munoz of Commonwealth Edison. I was there too, but I took the picture.
In the meeting, the group talked about how many schools that they expected to apply for the next round of grants. The deadline is March 30, 2007. Applications are on line at the Illinois Community Foundation Web site: www.IllinoisCleanEnergy.org.
In the first round of grants in 2004-2005, 21 schools received grants for PV installations that ranged from 51 kW at Dixon, Illinois on the Ronald Reagan Middle School to a number of 1 kW installations all over Illinois. In 2006, 21 more schools were selected and they are now getting 1 kW systems. The smaller size enables us to put solar on more schools. In the next round with the March 30, 2007 deadline, there will be up to 30 schools selected. All of the new schools are getting live data collection systems and Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation has also agreed to go back and add live data collection systems to the 2004-2005 schools. So, there will be at least 72 “solar schools†by the end of this year all with live data collection in real time visible by anyone on the new Web site. It is a very positive program for schools and for science and math.
We talked about the new Web site that Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation is creating and data collection systems and ribbon cutting events. Commonwealth Edison is going to encourage schools to apply through links on its Web site. The meeting didn’t last that long, but important decisions were made. Today I prefer restaurants where I can see them making my food and I also enjoyed watching this group of very nice and very smart people agree on a program that will encourage schools to use solar energy to help improve their students science and math skills as well as educate their communities about renewable energy. It made me feel good to be “in the kitchen†and watch them create the next round of solar electricity grants for Illinois schools.