At The Healing Place, Dr. Trish Kallenbach specializes in offering holistic veterinary care in addition to massage and wellness for the folks and animals who live in the rural community of Crystal River along the west coast of Florida. 

As a wellness practice, she needs to create and foster a physically comfortable environment. That means she can’t skimp on the air conditioning, even if it is expensive to run in Florida’s notoriously humid climate.

“It’s a big metal building,” Kallenbach said of the 4,500-square-foot space where she works. “It’s probably not the most energy efficient when it comes to air conditioning.”

Once she connected with a solar contractor, though, she discovered a few possibilities that could reduce her electricity usage, shore up backup power and reduce her electrical bills while still maintaining the comfort she requires in the practice. The contractor helped her apply for and receive federal funding, through the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP), that allowed her to make investments in efficiencies that might otherwise have been financially out of reach.

The REAP program recently received additional funding through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which was passed by the 117th Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden.

“I got grants up the wazoo,” she said, noting the support she received from her solar contractor. “They did all the grant writing. I didn’t even know it existed.”

In combination with a REAP grant and a grant from her local utility, Duke Energy, Kallenbach was able to pursue $100,000 in upgrades — which included light bulb replacements and solar panel installations — that would ultimately reduce her electric bills in some months to as little as $32. They had been as high as $800 a month.

It cost $6,000 alone to replace the 153 fluorescent light bulbs she had throughout her practice with LED bulbs, so the grant funding made that upgrade accessible, she said. She estimates that she contributed about $36,000 toward the project and the rest was covered by the combined federal and local grant funding. Kallenbach also received additional savings through federal tax incentives, which are part of the REAP program.

“For a period of time I was the largest solar energy maker in our county,” Kallenbach said. 

After seeing the returns on her investment, learning more from her solar contractor and recognizing the perils her livelihood faces when extreme weather disrupts electricity accessibility, Kallenbach applied for and received a second REAP grant that would help cover the costs of backup power. 

She is susceptible to losing power, and frequently does, when tornadoes or hurricanes strike, or if a car accident in the vicinity damages a power pole — a more frequent occurrence than she’d like. With refrigerated biologics and vaccines, and a freezer full of holistic pet food, she can’t afford to be without electricity. Even with solar arrays, she still needed a backup battery in case of an outage.

“If I lose power, I have to shut my business down. I was losing about $1,000 a month,” she said. “If you have solar without a backup, when the grid goes down, you no longer have solar. You don’t get to have your lights or power even if you have solar.”

Kallenbach said she was “on the winning end” of her investment within five years. And she said the grant funding made all of the projects really affordable. She even opened her business for a tour when federal officials from Washington, DC came to visit to see how the funding had been put to use. 

Her advice to other business owners: Reach out and ask. 

“There are so many grants out there, particularly for renewable energy. The REAP grant is amazing,” she said. “If I can save the planet and save money at the same time, where’s the harm in that?

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), passed by the 117th Congress and signed by President Joe Biden, is a piece of federal legislation that aims to reduce inflation by lowering the cost of prescription medications, investing in domestic energy production, and promoting clean energy, among other objectives.