Low-cost solar system kept power on for Savannah couple after Helene

Oct 15, 2024

Marc Thomas wants to make one thing clear before he begins discussing the array of 14 photovoltaic panels on the rear roof of his Savannah home.

“This is not luxury solar power,” he stresses as butterflies flit between flowers in his pollinator-friendly backyard. “This is basic solar power, right?”

As Thomas speaks, a generator drones outside the house next door. It is four days after the remnants of Hurricane Helene tore through Savannah, and his neighborhood remains without electricity.

But the tidy one-story home the 77-year-old Thomas shares with his wife, Margo, never lost power thanks to the solar panels and accompanying battery storage.

It’s the fifth outage in the neighborhood since the system was installed in mid-April, but the Thomases’ service was never interrupted, he says.

“A couple of them we didn't even know about until neighbors told us that the power was out the next day,” Thomas adds.

The couple moved to Savannah from Baltimore in 2011 after Marc – also an author and poet – retired from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where he worked in operations management.

They’d been interested in going solar for years.

“But the prices were outlandish, and the salesmen were frightening,” Thomas says. “And the costs were such that, like the break-even rate on your savings was something like 10 or 15 years in the future. So, when you're looking at something when you're 77, that doesn't make a lot of sense.”

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Then Thomas read a news story about Georgia BRIGHT, a non-profit organization that makes solar more accessible to low- and moderate-income homeowners by eliminating up-front costs.

The program is reserved for households with incomes of $150,000 or less.

Georgia BRIGHT says it has 15 solar projects in the works or completed in Chatham County, with 11 of those in Savannah.

The Thomases’ system was the first in Savannah to be facilitated through the program, which buys and installs the systems, then leases them to the homeowner.

“The Thomas family represents exactly who Georgia BRIGHT aims to help – families who see the financial, environmental and health value of solar but face financial barriers or concerns about maintenance,” said the organization’s director, Alicia Brown, who led the city of Savannah’s sustainability efforts before moving to Georgia BRIGHT in July. “Without the program, they wouldn’t have been able to make the switch.”

Since that switch, the Thomases’ typical power bill has plummeted from $180 to $30.

“What we don’t use goes back to Georgia Power and we get credit for it,” Thomas adds.

But in the Thomases’ case, the benefits of solar go beyond energy reliability and cost.

Marc suffers from sleep apnea and uses a machine at night to help him breathe regularly.

“So, power continuity in my sleep is very important to me, not just because I have difficulty sleeping, but the process of stopping breathing and starting again is very rough on the body and the brain,” he explains.

The battery storage allows the machine to operate even when the panels aren’t exposed to sunlight.

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While their home is still connected to the traditional energy grid, the Thomases do all they can to avoid having to use it.

“Our system is not designed for maximum load,” Marc says. “So, when we're fully on solar, we don't have the oven on, and we try not to use the air conditioning any more than we have to.”

The Thomases also line dry all their laundry and are careful to limit how much power any electric devices use, particularly when not in use. That includes appliances with digital time displays.

“If we're not careful, we can use enough power so that the batteries reach a minimal state, and they shut off for a while and then, as long as the sun is shining, they come back on in a little while,” Thomas says. “If we don’t turn enough stuff off, it's hard to make it through the night. But we can do it.”

The Thomases don’t mind being trendsetters. A head-turning mural by artist Jose Ray featuring multicolored flowers, birds and butterflies encompasses the entire front of their home.

“He worked on it on and off for a couple months,” Marc says. “When he was just starting out, some of the neighbors were a little doubtful, like, ‘Isn't that a little strange?’ But then those same people came by to watch him whenever he was here working.”

The Thomases’ solar panels also have gotten attention in the neighborhood, but Marc reiterates that practicality, not status, was the motivation behind them.

“This is not luxury solar,” he repeats. “But it does exactly what we want.”

John Deem covers climate change and the environment in coastal Georgia. He can be reached at 912-652-0213 or [email protected].