City of Racine to reap solar power from parking lot project
BY MICHAEL BURKE
Journal Times
Wednesday, November 7, 2007 8:52 PM CST
RACINE — Instead of investing in parking lots, the city has decided to invest in solar power.
Officials here had a choice: Spend $135,000 to repave a little-used parking lot; or do something else with the money and the property.
They chose the latter. The city will soon build one of the larger solar electricity-generating systems in the state.
“It’s certainly the largest of any government facility in Wisconsin,” said Carl Siegrist, solar programs manager for We Energies.
He said the system would power about five average homes, although the electricity will help run the City Hall Annex, where it will be installed.
On Tuesday the Racine City Council authorized Sturtevant’s Magaw Electric Construction Co. to build the 37-kilowatt photovoltaic system.
It will sit directly south of the annex, 800 Center St. on what is now about a 40- to 50-space parking lot.
“No. 1, no one parks there,” Mayor Gary Becker said. The lot needed paving, and it didn’t make sense to do that when the annex is also served by a large adjacent parking lot to the east.
The paving money was diverted toward the $341,934 photovoltaic system which should supply about 10 percent of the annex’s electrical needs.
The annex houses such city departments as water and wastewater, parks and recreation and municipal court. Some of the 75,000-square-foot building is also rented to tenants including probation and parole.
Becker credited city Department of Public Works Commission Rick Jones for the idea. Jones pointed back toward Becker.
“It actually grows out of the mayor’s interest in the environment,” Jones said. The city evaluated both solar and wind projects and settled on using the sun.
We Energies did a solar study of the site and gave the city a $99,975 grant for the project. Other monetary sources for the project, besides the $135,000 from the parking lot project:
* $71,928.68 available because bids on remodeling Racine City Hall came in below the budgeted amount.
* $35,000 from Wisconsin Focus on Energy.
“It’s an economically viable project,” Becker said. Jones said the expected pay-back time is about 15 years.
The solar panels will be mounted on poles at a 30-degree angle in four 116-foot-wide rows, in a fenced-in area, Jones said.
He said the city plans a second phase, probably in 2009. It will be a project of similar size, mounted atop a first-floor annex roof at the annex’s south end. But officials wanted the first solar system to be on the ground.
“We wanted this to be more visible to people,” Jones said.
“These are the type of projects that cities need to be leaders on,” Becker said. “It’s a part of marketing the city ... and people pay attention to what cities are doing on these things.”
“It’s a good, solid alternative-energy project,” he added.
And one that can be repeated; Siegrist said We Energies will approve a grant each calendar year in its program for schools, governments and nonprofits.
“I think it’s the type of project that replicable,” Becker said. “But at this point, not without a subsidy.”
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