The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department will install solar arrays on 17 to 18 of its facilities around the state.

Some of the solar arrays will supply up to around 10 percent of the power needed at a particular site. Others will be small arrays and will provide just a fraction of the power the facility uses, said Andee Chamberlin, the energy and facilities director for the department.

The department aimed to supply just a small amount of power for each facility in order to offset electricity demand and expense at multiple sites. All together the solar arrays will produce about 723,000 kilowatt hours of power annually and will save the department $50,000 to $85,000.

While the solar panels might have completely covered the energy usage for one or two buildings, the department opted to spread the arrays out across properties that wanted it.

“We didn’t want to produce more power than we needed at any one site,” Chamberlin said. “It just doesn’t pay in most parts of the state to produce extra.”

While the project will save money and does feed into the department’s mission to conserve environmental and cultural opportunities for the citizens of Texas, it will also serve a greater purpose, Chamberlin said.

“We have a unique opportunity to communicate this kind of technology to the public,” Chamberlin said.

In addition to being prominently placed on public and educational buildings, all of the solar arrays at the various parks and wildlife department sites will be connected to an online monitoring system that will allow people to log on and see how much energy each array is generating at any given time.

Since the arrays will be spread out across the state, the data could provide significant scientific insight for social researchers.

The department funded 80 percent of the cost of the new installations through grants from the State Energy Conservation Office, Chamberlin said. The department worked with GridPoint, a renewable energy company based in Arlington, Va., to get the solar panels.
This is the first major solar installation the parks and wildlife department has undertaken and may not be the last.

“As an agency, we are trying to do more and more of these types of projects,” Chamberlin said.

Image courtesy of Texas Solar One.