A Tampa, Florida ministries is ready for the next hurricane season — and the thousands of people it may need to feed and shelter — thanks to a new Power Secure microgrid.
Working with PowerSecure and the Tampa Electric (TECO), Metropolitan Ministries Foundation late last week inaugurated a microgrid designed to enable the organization to continue to serve its community, even through severe storms.
The microgrid project had its roots in 2017 when Hurricane Irma was barreling toward Tampa. As it turned out, Tampa did not experience a direct hit from Irma, but Metropolitan Ministries’ main campus and much of the region suffered from flooding and lost power for four days or more.
The morning after, families came to Metropolitan Ministries and lined up looking for help. Metropolitan Ministries was forced to operate in the dark with a mobile kitchen in the parking lot in order to feed community members and residents and keep them safe.
“It took us a little bit by surprise how much the people and city depend on us,” Justine Burke, the organization’s vice president of marketing, said in a statement. “Many couldn’t just evacuate or go to a hotel for a week because they could not afford it. When we showed up to work the next day, there was a huge line of people outside of our Outreach Center, waiting for us to help them.”
Backup generators too expensive
In the following days, Metropolitan Ministries served more than 4,000 hot meals to local families and provided thousands of ‘meals, ready-to-eat’ (MREs) to area families. The non-profit organization also sheltered many displaced families, as well as the more than 100 families already residing at the facility. On average, Metropolitan Ministries provides services to 30,000 families and homeless individuals.
“We had portable generators all over the place, many loaned by volunteers,” Burke says. “We charged our phones on those generators and ran the refrigerators, but it was really more of a reactionary plan.”
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