Solar panels extend Marine Corps green efforts

[EloiseWeenie]

Solar panels extend Marine Corps green efforts

www.jdnews.com/articles/solar-107386-base-lejeune.html

JACKSONVILLE, N.C. (AP) The Marines are going green at Camp Lejeune as solar farms are popping up across the base in eastern North Carolina.

Camp Lejeune is in the process of building multiple photovoltaic farms that will give the base the ability to generate up to 10 MW of instant solar energy at any time.

The solar farms are popping up all over the base, as Thomas Burton, Facilities Engineer Manager for Camp Lejeune and the surrounding bases, said they plan to install the energy alternatives “anywhere we can put them” — on building rooftops, in fields that are not being used for training or other purposes and in canopy-form over parking areas to double as shaded parking.

The most visible farm, by the Camp Lejeune main gate, can be seen right off Lejeune Boulevard; it has the ability to produce .852 MW of instant power, or the capacity to generate enough electricity to power 100 homes over the course of a year.

“The Marine Corps is trying to do a lot of things with clean energy,” Burton told The Daily News in a phone interview, adding that the construction of solar farms will lower the Corps’ reliance on outside energy sources.

The panels are designed to generate the most electricity during the sunniest, hottest times of day, which also happen to be the times of day when air conditioning units are working harder to keep buildings cool, thereby using more power. The system is designed to help offset the power demands of the base, and lower the electricity bills over time, Burton said.

The installation of these solar panels means Camp Lejeune will save roughly $500,000 per year on electricity, but Burton added that the cost-saving initiative on Camp Lejeune is significantly lower than it would be on Camp Pendleton, for instance, because electricity costs are relatively cheaper on the East Coast.

“In California, you could pay 16 cents per kilowatt hour for power, but the same electricity in Eastern North Carolina will cost only 6 cents per kilowatt hour,” Burton said. “So payback time is lower on the east coast, specifically in Eastern North Carolina, because the utilities and electricity are really cheap.”

The farm by the main gate cost roughly $7.5 million to construct, but it’s part of a bigger contract that included a total of 5.37 MW worth of solar farms constructed throughout the base, for about $38 million. That contract was awarded to San Francisco based construction company URS Corporation.

The remaining 4.63 MW worth of solar farms are being constructed through various other funding streams, Burton said.

He told The Daily News that the solar panels being installed on Camp Lejeune will pay for themselves in about 30 to 40 years, right around the same time they’ll need to be replaced.

“What happens is the panels slowly lose their ability to generate power,” he said, adding that the degradation period for the panels being installed on Camp Lejeune is about 15 to 20 percent, meaning the panels will generate 15 to 20 percent less power 30 years from now.

“So the economics for justifying solar may not be as good here as they are on the West Coast,” Burton said.

But, he added, if the price of electricity rises, which he said is likely to happen, the payback time on the solar panels will shorten.

Regardless of the economics, the Marine Corps is committed to becoming a green military, and they will continue that mentality into the future with more energy-saving initiatives, Burton said.

“We’re not going to continue building (photovoltaic farms) at the pace we have been recently,” he told The Daily News, adding that the future of the Marine Corps’ green initiative lies in discovering ways to lower the overall dependency and need for electricity.

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Remember when everyone laughed at Jimmy Carter for putting solar panels on the White House?