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Hot take: the heat pumps at my kid's school in Phoenix are a bigger deal than my home setup
I toured my daughter's elementary school in Phoenix last month during the parent volunteer day and the principal pointed out their new heat pump system. They swapped out 14 old gas units and cut their cooling bill by about $1,800 a month, and this is in a district that had to cancel recess 9 days last fall because classrooms hit 88 degrees. What got me was that they funded it through a state grant most parents had no clue existed. I've been stressing over my own home retrofit for 2 years, but the school did it faster with way less money and it's helping 600 kids at once. Has anyone here helped push a school or church in their area to go electric? I want to know where that grant money actually lives.
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michael8071mo ago
the grant money actually lives" is the real question here and I bet the answer is buried in a patchwork of programs nobody talks about. At the federal level there's the Renew America's Schools grant through the DOE, and some states run their own green bank or energy office rebates on top of that. The catch is most districts don't have a staffer whose whole job is chasing that stuff, so it sits there unclaimed while parents like us are out here googling heat pump rebates at 11pm. If your district has an energy manager or a facilities director, that person is probably the key to the whole thing, and showing up to a school board meeting with the actual grant name printed out does more than you'd think.
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