JUST A FEW YEARS AGO, Dan Conant was living a life familiar to generations of West Virginians. Born and raised in the state’s Eastern Panhandle, he’d gone to college and left West Virginia to build a career for himself. But Conant, who was working on community solar panel projects in Vermont, couldn’t shake the feeling that he was needed back home, where the shuttering of the coal industry threatened the few employment opportunities that remained.
“It was almost too easy in Vermont,” he recalled. “I needed to be back in West Virginia.”
In 2013, he and his wife, Laura Nagel, a Pittsburgh native, returned to Jefferson County and “Solar Holler,” a crowd-funded venture that installs solar panels for no cost at nonprofits, was born.
“Free, local electricity allows [nonprofits] to put resources toward what matters—including taking care of our neighbors—and creation,” the organization explains on its website.
Solar Holler’s unique crowd-funding model is designed to function within the restrictions of West Virginia’s power industry legislation that, unsurprisingly, favors coal. Nationally, the solar industry relies on tax credits, for which nonprofits in West Virginia are ineligible. Solar Holler’s early efforts to circumvent this barrier—by selling solar panels directly to a church—were shut down by state lawmakers.
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