Solar panels are an increasingly popular, popular way to lower your energy bill and reduce your carbon footprint.

But the time cost research necessary to install them will be a hurdle for many.

Solar Rise Lexington is a city program designed to make solar installation easy and accessible.

It's only in its second year, but organizers say it's already been a big success.

Celebrating Lexington connects our residents with the vetted installer to help take them through a step by step process of the installation and also give them a discount up to 15% off their wholesale cost.

Well, I was just Googling information about solar panels and I just stumbled upon it online and I looked into it and at first I thought it was it was too good to be true.

We've already vetted the installer, so the homeowner or the small business owner knows that the hard work has been done.

They're getting someone that they can trust that can help them through this process.

Within not even a month, they called me and they scheduled a date to come out and and then about a month after that is when they came out and put the solar panels up.

They checked the roof out.

They checked the angle of the sun and made sure that my house was in the proper position.

They were awesome.

They explained everything to me.

You know, there's an app that they explained how to work it.

You know how to read it.

So right now, I've not cut into any of my electricity through the through the regular electric box.

It's all solar.

It's been all solar today.

Solar is actually going to help with the bottom line of their utility bill significantly because the solar panels are powered by the sun.

And so our reliance on the grid is less.

And so in doing so, you're paying less of a utility bill.

It's gone down.

It's gone down quite a bit.

I actually used to be on a budget plan with you.

I'm sure a lot of people are.

But now it's gone down so much.

I've canceled the budget plan.

And, you know, one month I think my bill was, you know, like $20.

It went down a lot.

2023 was very successful.

It was really very popular.

A new program.

And it took off.

We had over 600 interest loans filled out.

And in the end, we had 76 installs done.

There is an interest for them to fill out online and there is no fee and there's no obligation to do that.

The deadline was extended because we were getting good traction.

Really, we were starting to get a lot more interest forms filled out and so there was momentum in to really take advantage of that and the excitement for solar.

We decided to extend the deadline.

Since the program started, the city has awarded $2 million in grants for free installation to those who qualify.

Grant applications for 2024 have closed, but the Solar Rise Lexington program is still accepting general applications through Monday.