The problem

Many of us here at Pajarito Conservation Alliance are interested in solar power for our homes but can’t install panels on our own property, for reasons including insufficient roof space, too much shade, or being renters. You may have the same problem.

A solution

One solution is something called a community solar garden. The idea is simple: instead of buying or leasing solar panels on your own property, you buy or lease them somewhere else. This brings other benefits as well, such as economy of scale and avoiding possibly-major electrical upgrades on your house.

You can help, but you must act by January 8!

Los Alamos is a great place for this approach. We have tons of sunlight and lots of public buildings to host panels.

Opportunity is knocking! The Board of Public Utilities is hosting a survey on the county’s Open Forum to gauge public interest in a solar garden. Please take the survey to tell the BPU you want more solar power in Los Alamos. The survey closes at 11:59pm on January 8, so do it now.

Cookies!?

You may run into this problem:

This is related to something called third party cookies.

Web cookies are little blobs of data given to your browser by a website. In turn, the browser sends back to the website with each request it makes. Normally, cookies are sent only to the website that in the URL bar and are used to implement things like logins (think Gmail) and shopping carts (think Amazon). This is first party cookies.

Third party cookies go to websites other than the one in the URL bar. They are used to implement less savory things like ubiquitous social media widgets and advertising that tracks you everywhere. They also can be sometimes used to steal private information. They are something your sleazy uncle would use, and for this reason the browser trend is to disable third party cookies by default. (Hopefully you don’t actually have a sleazy uncle.)

The reason Open Forum requires them is a branding decision. The county wants to use peakdemocracy.com resources while showing a losalamosnm.us URL in the browser bar. There are other solutions that do not require third party cookies, but the county has chosen not to use them. (We’ve complained but didn’t get anywhere.)

So what’s the point?

It is safe to enable third party cookies for the county Open Forum.
Please do it so you can answer the survey. If the linked instructions don’t work for you, try searching for “enable third party cookies” and the name of your browser.
You might want to re-disable them when you’re done.