Eye-watering energy bills and the apparent individual helplessness in fighting against global warming has prompted two artists to show their north London neighbors that collectively they have the power to tackle both problems.

After raising £113,000 ($141,000), partly through crowd-funding, that gained attention by the artist couple sleeping on their roof for three cold winter weeks, Dan Edelstyn and Hilary Powell have organized for solar panels to be installed on dozens of houses on their street.

"If you can create an offer where you actually are saying: 'Look, let's just bypass a broken political system and let's do something directly ourselves together,' that's quite an attractive offer to make to people," said Edelstyn. Together with Powell, he spent a year convincing neighbors to join the project.

In Waltham Forest, the London borough where the artist couple lives, fuel poverty - when households cannot afford adequate heating - is at the third highest level in the UK capital.

That makes the project especially valuable for Edelstyn and Powell's neighbors, many of whom live in Victorian-era housing that can be poorly insulated and use more energy.

Estimating that it will cut his electricity bill by 70 percent. Ejaz Hussein, who's lived on the street for 45 years, said he was "quite delighted" by the project.

"First of all, it's good for the environment. And second thing, I can't afford electricity anymore," the father of two said. "So that will really help as I'm struggling."

Households powered by solar panel-derived electricity use less power from the national grid, cutting energy bills, and they can also sell any excess energy back.

And according to industry analysts, community projects tend to be much more efficient than individual solar installations as costs fall with scale.

The solar panels are being installed by Octopus Energy, which says it is doing the work at cost and not for profit, to help raise awareness of the need for adaption to renewable energy.

It's important because while such carbon-free approaches are needed, the intermittence of the energy can causes problems for the power grid, which are yet to fully adapt their systems to renewables. 

"It's not just a UK problem. This is a global problem: how we move to renewables. Big changes need to happen," Rebecca Dibb-Simkin, chief product officer at Octopus Energy, said.

"Communities are kind of almost forcing the hand of grids ... This is people coming together and saying we want power in this way."

Britain's energy regulator Ofgem said last month it was launching a policy review to speed up the connection of low-carbon energy schemes to the electricity transmission grid.

Edelstyn and Powell said they want their street to inspire others, not just to bring down bills and reduce carbon emissions, but to help drive community action.

Community projects growth slowed to 2.4 percent in 2022, after doubling in size each year between 2014 and 2017, according to advocacy group Community Energy England.

"We just want people to be able to access the finance that they need if they want to try and retrofit their house and decarbonize their street, and we want it to be simple and straightforward," Edelstyn said.