ARLINGTON, Washington — Arlington Municipal Airport (KAWO) has partnered with Veregy to build a solar array on the field.
The project, priced at $668,000, will feature a solar array totaling 87.5kW of DC power, which will be installed through a combination of solar-covered car canopies and rooftop solar arrays on the airport’s terminal building. It will be the state’s largest general aviation solar array, according to airport officials.
The solar installation is designed to “significantly offset the airport’s annual electric consumption, providing savings against rising utility costs by generating nearly 145,000 kWh of renewable energy annually,” airport officials added.
“We’re very excited to bring this project to fruition with Veregy,” said Marty Wray, director of Arlington Municipal Airport. “The savings over time will be extraordinary for the airport, for our tenants, and users alike, in addition to the city.”
“Veregy is excited to partner with the AWO Airport to provide the largest solar array for a general aviation airport in the state of Washington,” said Corey Harper, Veregy account executive.
The airport received a $250,000 grant from the Washington Department of Transportation for the project. It also will realize a 30% or more cost savings on the project from energy investment tax credits, according to airport officials.
The project is estimated to reduce over 2,500 metric tons of CO2, “signifying not only a significant economic benefit to the airport, but also a notable environmental impact as well,” airport officials said.
For more information: ArlingtonWA.gov/167/Airport, Veregy.com
My I remind every one of that joke from early in the last century……
“Like I told Orville and I told Wilbur… ‘It’ll never get off the ground’.” —on a Murphy’s Law poster… circa 1980.
Next door neighbor mindlessly parrots all the “reasons” solar is no good, sun doesn’t always shine, too expensive, panels degrade, the usual.
His daughter made him buy some removed panels and rig up a system. Now his electric bill is down to $25 a month (of which $12 is the utility connection fee), which he proudly boasts about, and in the very next breath he complains that solar is no good, sun doesn’t always shine, too expensive, panels degrade, the usual. Go figure.
Here are the numbers I’m working with – surplus 250 watt panels, $75 each (need 10 or 12). MPPT controllers from Temu, $30 each (need four). 6KW inverter, $100. Four slightly used car batteries. Total cost for a 2.5KW to 3KW system will be about $1,200 or so. My electric bill is currently (no pun intended) about $100 a month, so break-even for me is a bit over a year, so lets be pessimistic and say two years. Worth it? I think so . . .
The trick is to not buy brand new and don’t pay retail. Last year’s totally obsolete 250 to 300 watt solar panels can be bought all day long for under $100 each off Craigslist. Need more power? Just add some more panels – the fuel is FREE so I don’t need to have the latest and greatest, most efficient (and most expensive) panels.
The panels are mounted on a rack in the back yard (I have the room) so I don’t need to drill holes in my roof (which makes leaks) and I don’t have to remove the panels when it is time for a new roof either. (The roof is steel, and will outlive me, so that really isn’t a factor.)
And when these panels do “degrade” (estimated at a bit less than 2% a year, or about five watts per panel a year), I can just add one or two more $75 panels and restore the original output.
Electrons work real cheap . . . so lets use them.
People bad mouthing solar power neglect to recognize the cost of global warming caused by the petro based fuels they push.
Already the increased number of hurricanes and other warmer weather causes coste at least tens of BILLIONS of dollars a year and this is just the begining of a worsening situation !
So, what I see on the internet, and readers can confirm is that: The average cost of electricity in California is 30 cents per kWhr, not 42 cents per kWhr.
Below is what I see on the internet when I Google ‘Why is California electricity expensive?’
“The reasons for these high rates of increase are numerous. Two of the most important are (1) major upticks in the cost of natural gas used by power plants and (2) rising costs associated with the upkeep of the electrical grid.”
(1a) The U.S. is building 12 more export terminals for LNG. We will be exporting more LNG to Europe to replace the Russian LNG that Europe previously used. This is of strategic importance for the U.S. So with more gas exported, there is less for U.S. consumers, and supply/demand forces will cause the price of natural gas to rise when those 12 export terminals come on line. Mark my words.
Sunlight, as a fuel, is FREE. And the price of this ‘fuel’ will never go up from zero. And the sun will always shine on California, and will not be exported to Europe.
(2a) PGE transmission lines are sparking and causing fires, and need to be upgraded or replaced. And the brush out there is more dry and combustible than ever.
Climate change is becoming very real for California. TODAY (July 6, 2024) 17 fires are burning in California, destroying structures and infrastructure, as well as PGE infrastructure (wood telephone poles and wires). This record heat in July will only increase A/C use, and electricity use (vicious cycle / positive feed back loop) and is indicative of the hotter temperatures we can expect in the future. And (not to get on my high horse) but when did ‘virtue signaling’ become a bad thing? Are displaying good virtues a bad thing? Use your reasoning skills (which most pilots have in abundance) to avoid falling prey to propaganda. And finally, natural gas, though it is a clean burning fuel, is 40 times more potent as a green house gas than CO2. So I say, put up solar panels at the GA airports! And more power to them!
My PG&E rate is now $0.39 for baseline use and $0.49 for tier 2 use.
see the E1 residential rate ; https://www.pge.com/tariffs/en.html#ELECTRIC%20RATE%20SCHEDULES
The prior base rate was $0.42.
Looking at CA rainfall and daily max and min temps, there is no detectable change in temp, outside the big cities, which are seeing the ‘urban heat island’ affect.
BTW, wind and solar equipment can’t be made using wind and solar, oil based fuels and nat gas fuels are used, and will be for the next 50+ years.
Global warming is a reality, human made global warming is false.
We will cycle through this warming phase on the Earth. Then the earth will phase in to a cooling cycle. I will stick with the warming cycle.
No problem, none of us will be here to see it. Not even our great, great, and so grandchildren will see it.
Sit back and enjoy the warm season, like all summers, winter follows.
The first impression was how absurd to have these solar panels installed in Arlington WA where we have overcast and rain for more than 6 months of the year (especially this year). How about sunny Arizona?
It’s not about functionality of the solar panels. It’s about self satisfaction and tax credits and money.
Here’s a proposal for all solar and wind projects. As part of the approval process for installation, money from the owners of the site will be put into an escrow account in the amount to completely remove and restore the site to its original condition prior to construction.
Many of these renewable energy sites are owned by foreign companies. The electric companies only take the output on a contract basis.
Like a used car, the real value is in the beginning of its life. As the car, like solar, wind ect. Gets older it looses value and nobody wants it.
You, the American tax payer will be left holding the bag and all the problems of an abandoned site.
Solar is nice, but, like wind, it takes up too much valuable land, only operates under certain conditions, and the equipment degrades over time. The efficient way to generate baseload power is with small, modular reactors – LOTS of them. The US Department of Energy can set bid specs on reactors with industry professionals. Just as the military buys boats, tanks, and aircraft, DoE can buy those reactors and LEASE them to the utilities. Power utilities don’t care where they get their power from – their business is selling it. Leasing those facilities helps eliminate their liability issues. The only thing in the way is public opposition, driven by fear promoted by fossil fuel interests.
Please shut up! This array of purported planet saving devices off sets the purported environmental threat of airplane air and noise pollution generated by the airport. I’ve experienced one airport closure and am a tenant on another at risk. Let’s support the effort if only for our own survival.
Eileen Bjorkman, please give us the total cost of your system with the average energy produced so we can help you realize how much your $18/mo power bill is really costing you. Or just tell us what your monthly payment is for your system, if you financed it.
So I Eileen’s electric bill is 18 dollars a month. Great. What did she pay to have those solar panels installed? My neighbor got a quote for his house.
Your average 3 bedroom, 2 two bath was over forty thousand dollars. To save maybe a couple of hundred bucks a month. What a sham! We’re living in a bizarro world where common sense doesn’t matter.
Why? Virtue signaling? or to “save the planet” from mythical climate crises? Or reward Chicoms for sending thousands of children into rare earth mineral mines? One small gas-turbine plant powered by good-old Dino-fuel would be far more cost-effective than a solar farm, which gobbles up acres and acres of land that should be used to produce food, feed and timber in the private sector. Frack and drill everywhere to really help the environment and save us all money so we can fly more.
At $0.11 per kWhr, it will be 30+ years to break even on the cost.
By then, though, the panels will have degraded about 30%, or have failed, needing replacement.
Large scale pv is not cost effective.
Home solar pv might, but you’re just pre-paying your electric bill, assuming that none of the parts fail.
With all the pv and wind in CA, the cost of electricity has gone up 400% in 18 years.!
Now $0.42 per kWhr.!
You can be rest assured that it will cost far more than $686,000 to install it. It will likely be 2 or 3 times that much before it’s said and done, which is typically of government contracts. And the taxpayers are always left holding the bag.
Only to have the expenditures negated by the next hail storm, constant rain, snow and everything else that can go wrong with these pie in the sky waste of taxpayer funds.
I think it’s a good investment. I live near this airport (so in the same climate) and have had solar panels on my house for three years. My electric bill runs about $18/month and the panels have survived plenty of rain, snow, and hail. Even on days when there is cloud cover, they generate a surprising about of power.
Thank you. It’s nice to hear from someone who has actual experience and knowledge of solar panels and their use.
Please do tell – how an annual income of $13,000 on an investment of $668,000 can be a “good investment”…..
As a point of interest it would be typical for a fossil fueled power plant to generate at least 200 megawatts (MW), if not as high as 1200 MW. If my math is right as a comparison this ‘solar array’ of 87.5 kW equals less than .1 MW,… when the sun is shining.