Her retirement home said ‘no’ to solar panels. She got it to buy 1,344.

Susan Auslander, 89 years old, is an energetic, white-haired, convent-educated Prius driver, and when her retirement community told her it wasn’t feasible to go solar, Ms. Auslander decided to push back. That push became a five-year campaign.

“It became my hobby – not my obsession,” she said, as people sometimes do when evidence points the other way. “I wasn’t going to sit here in my rocking chair with my pearls in my hand.”

Whether it’s a hobby or an obsession, her efforts are now paying off. After years of hesitation, Meadow Ridge, the for-profit healthcare community in Redding, Conn., where Ms. Auslander lives, recently announced plans to install solar panels in two parking lots and on the roof of one building in the complex. The panels – 1,344 in total – are expected to offset 607.2 tonnes of carbon annually.

The residents survived, as Ms. Auslander sees it, recalcitrant management. The campaign lasted so long that one of the original instigators, a centenarian from Scarsdale, NY, did not survive.

On a sweltering September morning, Ms. Auslander, dressed in a white blouse and blue crepe pantsuit, led a tour of Meadow Ridge, where workers were inspecting parking lots to position solar panels. From the backseat of Ms. Auslander’s Prius, Carol Morgan, 79, a retired art book publisher, took photos of the workers for the resident-run newsletter.

“None of us would have taken a step forward without Susan,” Ms. Morgan said of residents’ push for solar panels. ‘She has given the mission new impetus. She has a disarming, winning quality, with a twinkle in her eye.”

Ms. Auslander, who grew up in the Bronx, arrived in Meadow Ridge six years ago, after a long career in public relations and fundraising and five decades in the League of Women Voters. In her apartment she keeps a photo of her mother with Eleanor Roosevelt, from her mother’s failed campaign for the Senate. Susan, then a high school student at Convent of the Sacred Heart, wrote press releases for the campaign.

At Meadow Ridge, a community of 285 apartments for adults requiring varying levels of care, she joined the resident buildings committee and noticed that one of the facility’s largest expenses was electricity, which cost more than $1 million a year . Her neighbors, like her, were largely retired professionals, with skills and time on their hands. Several of them had solar panels on their homes before moving to the retirement community.

She saw an opportunity.

She formed a solar committee and began trying to work on management, without much success. “They said, ‘We looked at it when we were building the community, but it wasn’t feasible,’” she recalls. “I said, ‘Technology has changed a lot since then.'”

So Ms. Auslander and her fellow residents began rallying their neighbors.

“Some people say, ‘I’ll be gone in 15 years, so I don’t care,’” said Doug Dawson, 77, a retired packaging manager. “Some people say that, but not very many. Most think it is a good thing to do.”

Ms Auslander added: “Most of us here are quite gloomy politically.”

The group contacted a local solar supplier, Verogy, who prepared a proposal for solar panels on Meadow Ridge, including site drawings and an analysis of the costs and savings. In doing so, they have pushed the facility’s management to give solar energy a different look.

“The residents were really in charge,” said Katie Shelton, development officer at Verogy. “They did a lot of preparatory work and got a lot of residents interested in the project.”

Bob Green, 85, a retired Wall Street trader and lawyer, was eager to join the cause. “We are assertive people,” he said. “When you come here, you don’t have a job and a lot of things change. But not your personality.”

Regarding the management of the facility, he jokingly added: “We had to hold their heads under water. Three managers died before we accomplished this. They drowned in a bucket.”

With plans in hand, Ms. Auslander and her group researched low-cost financing from the state’s Green Bank, as well as tax credits and subsidies from the local utility. She organized excursions to nearby buildings with solar panels.

And whenever Ms. Auslander met someone about solar energy, she sent an email to her community’s executive director. For years, the answer was always the same: It wasn’t practical, she said.

The hardest part, she said, was “not losing confidence. Even some members of my committee said, “Oh, that’ll never happen.” And I’d say, ‘Oh, come on, you gotta think positive.’

Subsequently, the facility’s owners changed management companies in December 2021 and appointed a new executive director.

This was an opening, Mrs. Auslander thought. She wasted no time in making her case, said Chris Barstein, the executive director. “Susan called me about the solar panel project before I even walked in,” Mr. Barstein said. “I was completely taken aback, but it was a good sign of what was to come.” Unlike the previous director, he said, “I was pretty excited about it.”

That is to say, the residents were ruthless.

“At one point Chris said, ‘Please stop with the letters,’” Mr. Green said.

The solar panels should be ready at the end of next year. Brett Mehlman, the facility’s chief operating officer, said resident pressure played a “substantial” role in the decision to add the panels, but was not the only driving force. “It makes sense for the long-term viability of Meadow Ridge,” he said.

For Ms. Auslander and her solar committee, the work is not done yet.

She wants to spread the solar gospel to other retirement communities in the area, including those that share ownership or management with Meadow Ridge. She already works with another resident who leads an organization of facilities like Meadow Ridge.

And she wants more solar energy on Meadow Ridge itself.

Her next step is to lobby state lawmakers to pass legislation favorable to solar energy. She turned to Anne Hughes, a local senator, for instructions on lobbying, which Ms. Auslander learned could be done remotely.

Ms Hughes said she was impressed by the group’s commitment; they even participated in a youth roundtable on clean energy, where they admitted that their generation had dropped the ball. “We train them on how to address the legislature and keep it under three minutes,” Ms. Hughes said.

But first, Ms. Auslander said, they needed practical help.

“I’m used to testifying before city councils and things like that,” she said. “But I have to learn Zoom.”