Walk in at Fawley Music on any given day and you’ll likely hear it.
The hot guitar solo.
Or, the attempted hot guitar solo, whenever a customer plugs one in on the showroom floor and lets ‘er rip.
In coming days, those customers will be plugging in, in an entirely different way.
That’s because the music store in Sabraton that has been part of Morgantown’s business soundtrack for more than 90 years is going solar.
“Yeah, they’re getting ready to get back up on the roof now,” store associate Alex Rhodes said Thursday morning. “The rain slowed them up a little bit yesterday.”
Rhodes, whose family owns the store, is talking about the solar panels being put up by a work crew from Solar Holler, West Virginia’s largest solar development, design, finance and construction firm.
Once those 30 panels are in, Fawley will be 100% solar, Rhodes said.
“We’re excited,” he said.
The work was made possible after the Morgantown business successfully applied for grant funds through the federal Rural Energy for America Program, or REAP, as it is known.
REAP is expected to bring more than $6 million in monies to farms and businesses seeking to retool to alternative energy sources across the Mountain State this year.
Visit Solar Holler at https://www.solarholler.com/ for more information and particulars on how you can apply.
To date, the energy company based in Huntington has outfitted more than 1,700 homes and businesses with solar power across the region, reports Heather Ransom, Solar Holler’s director of marketing and residential sales.
A total of 1,505 of their clients are in West Virginia, she said.
If you do the carbon math, she said, all of the above comes out to the clean-air equivalent of parking 7,000 cars permanently — or planting 536,000 trees.
Solar Holler last month also came out on the affirmative end in a settlement approved by West Virginia’s Public Service Commission, which reduced the net-metering credit for solar power customers.
Rhodes, meanwhile, said he likes the idea of a locally owned Morgantown company, in a state known for its coal production, exploring other energy avenues in the 21st century, and beyond.
His father, Casey, is president of Fawley Music.
And his late grandfather, Dusty, was a renowned high school band director synonymous with the store, which does a brisk business in instrument rentals and repairs for school band programs across the region.
The company has 10 full-time employees and another 15 who give music lessons there, he said.
“We’ve been talking about doing something like this probably since the pandemic,” Rhodes said, of the energy switchover.
“It’s good for the environment and it’s good for us. Let’s get a sunny day today.”
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