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Birthday a day to celebrate, protect and love our planet. And United Way of Long Island is celebrating in a unique way. News, 12 meteorologist Alex Colia is in deer park learning some ways to support our environment. Hi, Alex. Hi guys. Y and this very sunny day is so appropriate to talk about solar energy. So we're on the rooftop learning about their solar panel array and we're going to talk about that a little later in the show, it's 31,000 square feet that United Way is going to get to net zero. So that means $65,000 in energy savings and of course a promise for a much greener future. And I'm here with Rick to talk, talk a little bit more about firstly, what you can do with all of that extra money that you're going to be saving with the United Way. Yes, we can really reinvest that money into programming that we run at United Way and we have a lot of great workforce development programs. We have our power up program coming up to show how students can get connected to green energy and energy retrofit. But also this solar array, not only is a one and done for us. This is now a living learning laboratory and how to do solar installation, different renewable technologies, how solar energy could even power up your heating, your cooling with heat pumps. And right over here, we even have a high tech energy recovering ventilator, the best in ventilation, recovering the stale energy from the heat. And we get to run that all off our solar panels. You would never think this box could do all of that stuff. And I'm here with Daniel who is actually going to show us some of those really cool projects that you can do with power up, right. So what are people learning? Yeah, people are learning a lot about solar panel arrangement as well as wind turbine inspections. So what you can do, you can figure out arrangement orientation in the array with high quality aerial imaging. Um, one other thing you can do, you can do safety inspections, you can do less people more efficient with drones as well as using drones for building, uh, building information modeling and anything you need to get high up for. That's fantastic. And he said all of that casually while he was flying one of those drones, by the way, guys reporting, I'm meteorologist, Alex call Deer Park, Alex with the hard hat on you fit in. You look pretty good out there. Thanks Alex.

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Today is Earth Day a day to increase efforts to protect our planet. And one nonprofit is celebrating in a creative way news. 12 Alex Kam is in Deer Park with the United Way of Long Island, Alex. How are they celebrating? They're putting me to work is how they're celebrating guys. We are building a solar panel array with 577 panels. That's what it takes to get United Ways, 31,000 square foot property to net zero. That means they do not spend energy. I'm learning about all of this with Femi Aoli, who is a journeyman for Ivew local 25 and very full circle. You are also a graduate of United Ways Youth Build Program. So how did you get involved in this? Well, when I was younger, I was getting in trouble, you know, running the streets and then I found a youth build program and it kind of transformed my life at that age, I was ready to like for a transformation and uh United Way funded the youth program, I went above and beyond in my class and I graduated, they helped me transform my life through United Way I got into opportunities in Long Island, which was a pre apprenticeship program. And through them, I got into IBW local 25 the best junior to Long Island. And through them, everything came full circle because they reached out to the company, I work for Sunrise Power Solutions. And uh the plan was to go Net Zero. And I'm back here today after 1011 years and we're installing solar. It's amazing. So they invested in your future at United Way and now you're helping invest in their future by getting them to Net Zero. And you've done such incredible work so far this morning. But for people at home explain how easy it is for solar panels to actually work, right, Alex. So the sun hits the solar panel right from the solar panel, we have uh wires that go to inverter. The job of the inverter is to transfer the DC power from the sun to AC. After that, from the inverter, the power goes to a combination panel and the job of the combination panel, it controls each inverter just like the panels in your home. You switch it, you switch the breaker and uh and it's like a switch, it goes off and on. From the combination panel, it goes to what we call a transformer and we transform the voltage from high voltage to everyday work. Working voltage 120 volts. After the transformer, it goes to a disconnect switch which is very important because if anything goes wrong and we have firefighters, we need to have one switch to turn everything off. We just installed right. And from the disconnect switch, we tie it into the service that they have already. And that's as simple as it gets. It's amazing. And you're literally getting the sun's energies to power your house or in this case, United Way and coming up, we're taking flight. So we'll tell you what that means in a little bit guys. All right, Alex. Thank you.

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News 12’s Alex Calamia is in Deer Park with United Way of Long Island where they are celebrating.

It’s Earth Day! Find out how United Way is celebrating.

News 12’s Alex Calamia is in Deer Park with United Way of Long Island where they are celebrating.

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