Falmouth Resilience Fellow, Oona Molyneaux, highlights a community's effort to become resilient to power outages and climate change effects in Maine. Through the Community Resilience Partnership, the Town of Falmouth received a grant to install solar panels at Hurricane Valley Farm, operated by Cultivating Community. The initiative enhances the farm's energy independence, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and expands Cultivating Community's programs, ultimately making the community more sustainable and resilient to climate change.
As storm surge flooding and electricity grid failure continue to impact Maine communities it is vital to become more resilient to intense weather, power outages, and flooding. This story focuses on a community’s commitment to becoming resilient to power outages. The Community Resilience Partnership, operated by the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future, assists communities through grant opportunities to reduce carbon emissions, transition to clean energy, and become more resilient to climate change effects such as extreme storms, flooding, rising sea levels, public health impacts and more. The Partnership was launched in December 2021, a recommendation that came from the State’s climate action plan, Maine Won’t Wait.
After the Town of Falmouth received a Community Action Grant from the Community Resilience Partnership in 2022, they partnered with the Falmouth Land Trust (FLT) and Cultivating Community, to install solar panels at Hurricane Valley Farm (HVF). The Falmouth-based community farm that is run by Cultivating Community helps create access to affordable land to grow vegetables vital to new Mainer’s diets, but that are not available in grocery stores. Cultivating Community also supports resilient community growth through youth education programs throughout the Greater Portland area.
The goal of the project was to create a way in which the farm had backup power in case electricity was lost during a storm. It was imperative for Cultivating Community to find a way to power the fans in the greenhouses during an outage so that the thousands of seedlings they grow over winter, did not die due to freezing. In addition to the greenhouse fans, the solar panels and battery pack also help to power the lighting and water pumps for the greenhouses and washing stations, as well as refrigeration and storage for produce. Energy independence at the farm, as well as reduced greenhouse gas emissions, would make the farm more resilient to storm damage.
On a cloudy day this past Spring, Theresa and I met a very enthusiastic, Sandy Alles, Director of Farm Sales at Cultivating Community, to tour the solar installation. Alles described how Cultivating Community partnered with ReVision Energy to complete the project. ReVision Energy was a true partner in this project, donating staff time during installation and using funding from their Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) program. The funding from ReVision allowed them to install a Tesla battery bank in the basement of the farmhouse, which will ensure the farm has power even if the electricity grid loses it.
Since the project’s completion the solar array is not only offsetting all the electricity costs at HVF but is also offsetting costs at Cultivating Community’s other community farm, Packard-Littlefield Farm in Lisbon. This cost-savings has enabled Cultivating Community to expand their programs for youth and new Mainers.
The common goal that united the Town, FLT, Cultivating Community and ReVision has left our community feeling more sustainable and resilient to climate change. Alles pointed out that the farm and farm manager who live in the farmhouse have already had to rely on the Tesla power bank during a power outage this past winter. The Cultivating Community team is excited by how well the solar array system works for sustaining the operations on the farm, even during intense storms.
About Oona
Oona grew up on a homestead in Machias Maine, spent many winters in Sonora, Mexico, and now calls Portland, Maine home. Since attending the Maine Coast Semester at Chewonki, a school dedicated to sustainability and place-based learning, she discovered a passion for conservation through policy and fostering resilient communities. During her gap year she worked on olive farms in southern Spain through the Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms community. She applied her farming and organizing skills in her roles at FarmDrop and Cultivating Community. As the Maine Clean Communities intern at the Greater Portland Council of Governments, she expanded her knowledge of data organization, stakeholder and community outreach and municipal planning. In her free time, Oona enjoys cooking, adventuring with her puppy and beginning knitting projects which tend to remain unfinished. As a Resilience Corps Fellow, Oona is thrilled to assist the Town of Falmouth in the implementation of their Climate Action Plan.
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