Our Story
About The Grid Project
We install solar panels and battery storage in communities. Schools, hospitals, and civic centers become buildings that generate revenue and stay operational when the grid goes down.
How It Started
Built on a Different Model
The institutions communities depend on most are being asked to do more with less, and their budgets are under pressure. The Grid Project was born to build a different model.
Solar panels and battery storage can do more than reduce a utility bill. Paired together, they turn schools, hospitals, and civic centers into revenue-generating assets, creating a sustainable income stream that goes directly back into services, staffing, and resilience. A high school or community hospital can keep their doors open when the grid goes down.
This isn't a new idea. It's an underdeployed one. Other countries mandate it. Wealthy districts already have it. The Grid Project exists to bring it everywhere else, because the communities that need it most are the ones who've gone without it the longest.
Purpose
What We're Here to Do
To provide communities with energy and financial sustainability so that they can focus on providing the best services for those they serve.
To help communities attain energy security, safety, and independence.
Our Values
- Accountability
- Sustainability
- Collaboration
- Balance
- Innovation
Leadership
The People Behind the Work
-
Brandon Foster
Co-Founder & Executive Director
Brandon started The Grid Project after recognizing that the same solar and battery storage systems already generating revenue for well-funded institutions could work just as well for the communities that have gone without them. He sees every school, civic building, community center, and multifamily property as infrastructure waiting to be put to work financially, not just functionally. A software architect with over two decades of experience building complex systems, he brings the same long-term, compounding thinking to community energy that has defined his engineering career.
-
Kevin Hooks
Co-Founder & Director of Finance
Kevin shaped The Grid Project's nonprofit structure from the beginning, grounded in a conviction that the communities most in need of these systems should never be priced out of them. With a career spanning hospital finance, strategic planning, and financial operations across major health systems, he brings the rigor of institutional finance to a mission-driven model. He has a particular focus on the financial pressures facing hospitals and medical facilities, and sees distributed energy as one of the few tools that addresses both operating costs and community resilience at the same time.
-
Yulian Danusastro
Director of Operations
Yulian brings over fifteen years of operational and performance improvement experience across major healthcare systems, most recently stepping into a chief operating officer role at a nonprofit hospital. His career has been built on translating complex organizational challenges into sustainable, measurable improvements. He joined The Grid Project because he sees hospitals and civic institutions as two sides of the same problem: essential services carrying financial burdens that smarter infrastructure could help relieve.