Solar Neighbors
Building Community Power
NEWCC’s Solar Neighbors initiative is working to ensure that the transition to clean energy creates meaningful and lasting benefits for the communities we serve.
Our approach goes beyond installing solar panels. We are building a community-centered energy model that combines renewable energy, battery storage, resilience, and community ownership to reduce energy burdens, strengthen trusted neighborhood institutions, and help residents benefit directly from the clean energy transition.
Solar Neighbors Community Energy Alliance
The Solar Neighbors Community Energy Alliance brings together churches, nonprofits, community organizations, residents, and technical partners to develop renewable energy assets that serve the broader community.
Solar and battery systems installed at trusted neighborhood sites can reduce energy costs for participating organizations while creating new opportunities to reinvest energy savings into the community. Through NEWCC’s evolving Community Solar Trust model, those benefits can help provide energy-bill assistance to households facing high energy burdens.
At the same time, participating sites can become neighborhood resilience resources—combining clean energy with battery backup, community internet, emergency communications, and other services that help residents stay connected and supported when the power goes out.
How Community Power Works
Trusted Community Sites
We partner with churches, nonprofits, and other neighborhood institutions that already serve and have relationships with residents.
Solar + Battery Storage
Participating sites are equipped with clean energy systems designed to lower operating costs and provide greater energy resilience.
Community Benefit
Energy savings can be reinvested to help energy-burdened households, extending the financial benefits of solar beyond the building where the panels are installed.
Community Neighborhood Resilience
Solar, battery storage, free community internet, and emergency preparedness resources can help participating sites remain useful and connected during outages and other emergencies.
Resident Opportunity
Community engagement, education, and workforce development create opportunities for residents to participate in, and help shape, the clean energy transition.
A Network of Community Energy Hubs
NEWCC is developing a network of community-based energy and resilience hubs across Detroit’s North End and surrounding communities.
Each site is at a different point in its clean energy journey, allowing us to demonstrate how neighborhood institutions can move from assessment and planning to infrastructure improvements, solar and battery installation, and ultimately long-term community benefit.
Prayer Temple of Love Cathedral
Prayer Temple of Love Cathedral is helping demonstrate how a trusted neighborhood institution can become a clean energy and resilience asset. The newly established 4.5 kW solar array will produce nearly 100% of the facility’s annual electricity needs, and the 10kWh battery will ensure resilience during grid outages. Solar development at the site is part of NEWCC’s broader vision for connecting renewable energy with community services and neighborhood preparedness.
Soul Harvest Ministries
At Soul Harvest Ministries, NEWCC has developed plans for a 15 kW solar array with battery storage, projected to generate approximately 18,000 kWh of clean electricity annually and offset a significant portion of the site’s electricity use.
The site also illustrates an important reality of equitable clean energy development: older community buildings may require substantial electrical infrastructure improvements before they are ready for solar. Addressing those barriers is an essential part of ensuring that historically underserved communities can participate in the clean energy transition.
New Grace Missionary Baptist Church
New Grace Missionary Baptist Church represents an earlier stage in the community energy hub process, beginning with assessment, community engagement, and planning to identify opportunities for energy efficiency, renewable energy, resilience, and community benefit.
Together, these sites demonstrate that community energy development is not a one-size-fits-all process—it is a pathway that begins with the needs, assets, and priorities of each community.
What Community Power Can Deliver
Our vision for Solar Neighbors connects clean energy investment with benefits residents can see and experience in their everyday lives:
- Lower energy costs for participating community organizations and households
- Solar generation paired with battery-backed emergency power
- Energy-bill assistance for energy-burdened residents
- Free community internet and resilient communications
- Trusted neighborhood locations that can support residents during power outages and emergencies
- Hands-on clean energy education and workforce pathways
- Greater community participation in decisions about local energy resources
For NEWCC, solar is not simply about producing electricity. It is about building community power in every sense of the word.
Solar Neighbors in the News
Can solar power ease energy burden for Detroit’s low-income communities?
Planet Detroit
March 4, 2025
Seven Additional Teams Move on to Phase 3
American Made Challenges- Community Power Accelerator Prize
April 17, 2024
Meet the Community Power Accelerator Prize Phase 1 Winners
American Made Challenges- Community Power Accelerator Prize
May 5, 2023
Nonprofit helps a Detroit neighborhood learn about solar
Yale Climate Connections
December 19, 2022
Air, Wind, Solar: In the Great Lakes region, energy stands out in President Biden’s efforts
Great Lakes Now
March 16, 2021
Solar Neighbors in Action
HEAR MORE FROM
YALE CLIMATE CONNECTIONS!
Be a Part of Solar Neighbors
The sun doesn’t just shine on the rich and famous; the sun shines on us all!
Rev. Joan Ross,
NEWCC Exectuive Director
Building a more equitable energy future requires residents, community organizations, funders, technical partners, and clean energy professionals working together.
Whether you are interested in solar for your household, want to explore becoming a community energy partner, or want to support the expansion of community-owned clean energy, there is a place for you in Solar Neighbors.
Community Impact
900+ Households Wired
Providing Internet access in the North End, Highland Park, and Hamtramck
3,000 Served
Monthly providing emergency food and services to families in 48202, 48203 & 48211
31,000+ Gallons of Stormwater Diverted
Our environmental initiatives are creating greener, healthier, more resilient neighborhoods
300,000+ Listeners
Potential radio audience listeners on air and online
