Social distancing service opportunity at Jack's Solar Garden

Jack's Solar Garden met several milestones over the past few months. The experimental agrivoltaic farm and solar power plant in South Longmont on 95th Street is on track to start delivering power from Colorado sunshine to local households and organizations through Xcel Energy's grid.

Almost all of the solar panels have been installed on land that had been used to grow grass and alfalfa for the past 30 or 40 years, according to Jack's Solar Garden founder and owner Byron Kominek.

The timing is right on schedule. Kominek expects to be able to connect to Xcel's grid by September as originally planned and start producing 1.2 MW of energy for local consumption. Once interconnection is completed, Kominek said, "All the power is going to go straight to the grid to get used up instantly."

Meanwhile, Kominek's goal for Jack's Solar Garden to become a hub of service and education is also already well underway.

On a recent Saturday in August, a group of volunteers could be spotted on the farm, wearing wide brimmed hats and wielding shovels and wheelbarrows.

Members of the Denver LoDo Rotary Club's Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) Satellite Group and the Denver Daybreak Toastmasters Club came up to help Kominek weed the farm's pollinator habitat, which was planted by Audubon Rockies in the spring.

The two groups found out about Jack's Solar Garden because Kominek is a part of the RPCV club, too, having served in the Peace Corps in Cameroon from 2004 to 2006.

"We were excited to check out his family's property and to help volunteer," said volunteer Gil Harrison, who is a part of both the Rotary and Toastmasters groups.

Harrison was digging out some large, particularly persistent weeds with a shovel.

Harrison works in financial services for TIAA in Denver for his day job, and said, "I just think it's really cool what Byron is doing with the farm." He was enthusiastic to support Kominek's solar clean energy effort, and said he was "just here to help out through the Rotary Club."

The president of the RPCV of Colorado club, Charlie Hunt, was nearby in the pollinator habitat. Hunt served in the Peace Corps in Vanuatu from 2006-2008. The habitat includes a mix of flowers, including sunflowers, and also a few food crops, like blackberries, bush beans, and squash.

Hunt said, "What I like about what [Kominek] is doing here is it minimizes pollution, and minimizes our carbon footprint for our kids and our grandkids going forward."

Hunt added that it's also "becoming more economically feasible for doing something like this," developing a solar energy source "as opposed to putting in a coal fired power plant or even gas. The cost of doing this is coming down significantly."

The volunteer opportunity at Jack's Solar Garden was a welcome return to a sense of normalcy for club members. Hunt said, "We do a service project every month, but it's gotten really difficult to do that because of COVID."

"This is an opportunity. You can be outside, in visual distance of people you know. I think it's kind of an ideal thing to be doing right now," said Hunt.

Kominek was also outside and busy carting wheelbarrow loads of weeds across the property by the solar panels. He was happy to announce recently that his partnership with the City of Boulder is official. A deal for Boulder to subscribe to the garden has been in the works for awhile, and Kominek was glad to see it made official last week.

Kominek said, "It's nice to partner with the City of Boulder on providing them power for one of their low income areas in the city."

He is out weeding the gardens most Saturdays, and welcomes individual volunteers and groups to come and join him. He said, "It's funny, I have a handful of folks that every so often just pull up to the farm and ask me what's going on."

This Saturday, Aug. 29, Kominek is hosting an Art & Action Day on the farm, including an opportunity to tackle the neverending weeds, engage in an art project, learn about biodynamic farming, or take a tour of the farm. Tickets are free and available on Eventbrite. (As of press time, only a few tickets were still available.)

Volunteer Gil Harrison said, "I'd encourage anyone in the area to come check it out."