Garrett Neese/Daily Mining Gazette Melissa Davis poses on Quincy Street in Hancock, outside of New Power Tour.

HANCOCK — The spreadsheet on the computer in the back of Melissa Davis’ office tells the story: 108 rim-joist seals, 80 refrigerators, 73 heat-pump water heaters, about 30 tankless water heaters, thousands of energy-efficient bulbs.

Add it all up, and Melissa Davis has helped about 1,100 households become more energy-efficient since she started New Power Tour a decade ago.

“I guess the reason for starting it really can be distilled down to service,” she said. “Valuing a service to others, which is what nonprofits do.”

The Hancock nonprofit’s mission is to increase the use of renewable water- and energy-efficient technologies. Since COVID, the mission has broadened to include supporting sustainable local economic development.

Over the years, New Power Tour has also brought in experts to teach people about more obscure alternative renewables, such as woody biomass and gasification.

“Those are the ones that aren’t as prevalent, but could benefit people a lot as well, more directly at the local level,” Davis said.

New Power Tour helped people replace their furnaces and boilers and water heaters through a program with Efficiency United. This year, it started working with Western Upper Peninsula Planning and Development Region on the MiHOPE program to assist in HVAC improvements.

Davis came to the Keweenaw in 2000, after attending Northern Michigan University to study philosophy.

“I knew this was the best place on the planet for me, and for my kid,” she said.

Davis formed New Power Tour in 2006. She’d been teaching at Good Times Music, which inspired her initial concept: a traveling event that would show people how renewables could power a soundstage, and also how to generate their own electricity.

“As I got going with it, I saw the energy efficiency was pretty much just as important as that,” she said. “So I started learning about the technologies that it would take to do that. Nonprofits exist to serve people, and I thought that the best way to serve people in our area was to help tighten up their houses and decrease their utility bills.”

COVID has been an obstacle. Prior to COVID, volunteers helped do the work. Now, New Power Tour gives people equipment and materials to do their own, and Davis shows them how to do it.

It’s also taken time to talk to homeowners, not all of whom know the difference between a furnace and boiler, much less what needs to be improved. But seeing them talk with contractors and meet up with experts who can suggest the right changes has been rewarding, she said.

“It’s kind of a slow ride,” she said. “It’s taken a lot of patience. And there has been times where it looked like it was just not going to work. But it did.”

The New Power Tour office carries nods to Davis’ past in the form of pianos. But she doesn’t play much anymore, she said.

“I hardly ever play, just because there’s so many other things we’re doing,” she said.

Next, she’s starting a business incubator next door to her office on Quincy Street.

“Our vision with that is to trap the dollar from beginning to end locally as much as possible, she said, working with wood, sewing and bakery,” she said. “So I think we’re going to focus on bakery first and hopefully help merge some cottage industries, and also by developing markets for people that want to make stuff at their houses.”

In the future, she wants to keep bringing more help to people in the area.

“Helping people become more energy literate — not only energy efficiency, but the whole picture,” she said.