A group of us at Trinity Covenant Church in Lexington, have been working for three years, with the help of Mark Sandeen, Repower Partners, to bring solar electric generation to our church. Today (May 20, 2017) is the dedication of the recently completed 25KW solar canopy in our parking lot! The canopy has full southern exposure, which we discovered was a much more energy-and cost-efficient solution for our site than our church roof. We orginally planned for a 56KW system across the whole back of the parking lot, but in February 2016 the MA DOER re-allocated the SREC II caps for large (>25KW) and smaller (<25KW) systems, so we had to quickly revise the size of the project and submit it, to get it in the queue.
Our building dates to the 1960s and has electric baseboard heat, so that our total electric bills come to about $18,000-20,000 per year. This system is projected to save us about $6000 in net metering annually, about a third of our total electric bill. We are thrilled to replace this chunk of our electric use with solar, and contribute a little bit, on our small corner of the earth, for renewable energy.
The nation-wide non-profit group Interfaith Power and Light does energy audits of houses of worship, which have quirky energy use patterns compared with houses and office buildings. We hope to work with MA IPL next, to conserve energy where possible in our building and operations.
