Solar powered churches as power outage shelters
Hurricane Ida knocked out power across New Orleans for 10 days in September 2021, in heat that averages near 90 degrees, and the outage killed nearly a dozen people from heat and carbon monoxide poisoning. Together New Orleans, a coalition of congregations, answered by building solar power and battery systems inside churches and community centers, called Community Lighthouses, meant to keep lights, refrigerators and medical equipment running as power outage shelters when the wider grid fails. Together New Orleans says on its site that the network now includes 18 active Community Lighthouses across the city.
The federal, city and foundation money that built the first ones
Building the first 16 lighthouses took federal, city and foundation money working together. The office of Representative Troy Carter, the member of Congress for the 2nd district of Louisiana, says it secured 3.8 million dollars in federal funding for the project, and its release describes that award as the largest community project funding in the nation for a solar related project. The Greater New Orleans Foundation added 1 million dollars as a founding partner leadership challenge grant, and the City of New Orleans put in 2 million dollars from Wisner Grant and American Rescue Plan Act funds. The first lighthouse opened at CrescentCare, a federally qualified health center, helped by Direct Relief, a nonprofit that gave the Footprint Project financial assistance and CrescentCare a Power for Health grant. The pilot aimed to finish before hurricane season began on 1 June 2023, and the network goal is 86 lighthouses citywide.
Funding secured for the initial pilot phase of 16 lighthouses, as reported by the office of Representative Troy Carter.
Show the numbers
| Federal funding | 3.8 |
| Foundation grant | 1 |
| City funds | 2 |
A settlement with Entergy pays for a much bigger expansion
The network faced its first real test in Hurricane Francine in 2024, a category 2 storm that flooded parts of the city but caused no deaths, with 9 lighthouses operating at the time. Now the city is funding an expansion far larger than the church network alone. The New Orleans City Council approved 28 million dollars for a battery incentive program in December 2025, paid for by a settlement between Entergy and the council over how Entergy handled one of its nuclear plants, so it costs residents nothing. About 2 million dollars of that covers administration. The program expects to reach about 1,500 homes and about 150 nonprofits and businesses, and reserves 40% of residential funds for low to moderate income households. Homes can get up to 10,000 dollars toward a battery, and businesses up to 100,000 dollars. Entergy already manages nearly 140 customer battery systems in an existing pilot, about 12 of them at Community Lighthouse sites, paying each home up to 600 dollars a year for grid services, and dispatched the pilot 6 times in 2025, mostly for testing.
The existing pilot count is current. The 2 new incentive program figures are the city expectation announced in December 2025, for a program not yet built.
Show the numbers
| Existing customer battery pilot | 140 |
| New incentive program, expected homes | 1,500 |
| New incentive program, expected businesses | 150 |
What a lighthouse does when the grid fails
Bethlehem Lutheran Church, one of the sites, opened in 2023 with battery storage capacity up to 50 kilowatt hours, enough to keep a shelter running through an outage rather than send power back to the wider grid.
It's really the power outages now that kill you.
Broderick Bagert, an organizer for Together New Orleans. Source 4.
These lighthouses will enable our houses of faith and nonprofits to better serve Louisianians when it's needed most.
Troy Carter, the member of Congress for the 2nd district of Louisiana. Source 3.