WhenicomeClean.com

After a summer spent loading 130-pound batteries, calculating surface area measurements and digging a 100-foot-long trench through a house’s former foundation: It’s time. Keyante Aytch is ready to put in the refrigerator.

The fridge, located in the Libations to the Ancestors garden in Englewood, has been without electricity since November. It is one of more than 20 refrigerators across Chicago that allow community members to provide access to food. But a year after it was installed, in November 2020, the power went out.

“We know the site is important,” said Eric Von Haynes, a chief organizer of the Love Fridge network. “That’s why it’s become so important to figure out how to get it back up and running.”

Aytch, president of the startup company Sunbend Solar, proposed a solution: solar panels.

The big moment came on August 27, the day before the refrigerator and its new electrical accouterment were scheduled to be unveiled to the community. Aytch knelt behind the teal, pink and orange structure that housed the gray refrigerator. He plugged in the appliance.

And nothing happened.

He remembers thinking that if this was a TV show, a “dun, dun, dun” sound of doom would play. His heart sank.

He soon found out. It was a new outlet and he had to press one of the little buttons in the middle to start it.

The fridge turns on, powered by solar panels on top of a nearby shipping container.

The Love Fridge is back.

The Englewood Love Fridge can be found at 6344 S. Morgan St., just a few blocks from a Whole Foods. The grocery store is set to close its doors on Nov. 13 after opening in 2016, then hailed as a way to bring quality food options to the neighborhood.

Englewood has one of the highest rates of food insecurity in Chicago, according to data from the Greater Chicago Food Depository. The need for food resources is always high in the neighborhood, said Taryn Randle, co-founder of the Getting Grown Collective, the organization that planted the garden that Love Fridge sits on. Interventions like an expensive grocery store don’t necessarily improve access, they say.

[ As Whole Foods prepares to leave Englewood, food leaders are planning ahead. ‘We need more options.’ ]

The refrigerator aims to act not as a vendor but as a channel between existing resources and people in the community to eliminate waste. Now, with inflation rising in household costs, the need for accessible, quality food options has never been higher, Haynes said.

“We’re offering a space for people to help each other while having a grocery store literally two blocks away that isn’t in a lot of ways,” Haynes said.

The refrigerator first started in 2020, powered by an extension cord hanging from a window in a house next door, Aytch said. The Getting Grown Collective will reimburse homeowners for the electricity they use.

After a restock, the refrigerator can be empty again within an hour, Randle said.

For the collective, the refrigerator ensures that food products are not wasted. If an organization has extra food, it provides a safe place to store it. It also extends the shelf life of their fresh produce, which used to wither by the end of the day when left outside for neighbors to collect. The Love Fridge organization also fills the refrigerator with food collected through several collaborative channels.

By November 2021, Randle said they couldn’t pay the electricity bill, so they pulled the plug on the refrigerator. During the winter, people still use the refrigerator for storage, because it is cooled to the temperature of Chicago. But in the spring, they had to put up a sign saying the fridge was gone.

“People keep asking when it’s coming back, and we started telling people we’re trying to get a solar panel,” Randle said.

“What?” was the usual response Randle received.

Love Fridge’s long-term vision always includes solar energy, Haynes said. The goal is to create sustainable places for communities to fulfill their mission that “food is a right, not a privilege.”

Aytch received his solar power certification in 2020 and started the company Sunbend Solar in 2021. The Love Fridge project cost about $15,000, Aytch said, and was funded through grants received by Love Fridge and the Getting Grown Collective. .

Aytch compared the technicalities of solar operation to the human body. The roof panels act as thick, “inhaling” energy that goes to an inverter, which acts like a brain, determining where and when to send the energy. Then the energy goes to a battery bank, comparable to a heart. These batteries send power to the refrigerator through wires that run through the garden about 18 inches underground.

Since the system uses batteries to store energy, the refrigerator can operate on its own for at least three days if no energy is input. , said Aytch.

Haynes said the Love Fridge network hopes to expand the use of solar to other fridges to reach people where they are, rather than where electricity previously existed.

“This allows us to work with more community gardens, even getting off the beaten path where homeless people can be close,” he said.

Currently, the network has a lot of food, with two warehouses to store it, Haynes said. But the organization always hopes to expand its volunteer pool to avoid burnout. Haynes said some volunteers have been working on the network for two years now, putting in a lot of time, something the organization appreciates.

“But when we talk about sustainability, it also means the capacity of people to do this thing as well,” he said. “That’s also part of creating a sustainable network.”

Already in Englewood, the addition of solar panels has increased interest in the operation, Randle said.

“More people are volunteering to clean out the fridge than ever before,” they said. “There’s a different appreciation for it now, after experiencing it not being there.”