As one of the Energize Maplewood! actions in 2016, the City conducted the Benchmark Your Business program to help businesses measure, reduce, and manage their energy use. Since that program, these organizations have reduced their annual electric use by over 480,000 kwh annually! With the great success these organizations had in reducing their energy use, we decided to revisit them to help them determine what the benefits of solar energy could be for them as their next step in reducing their environmental impact. Our project partner, Maplewood business paleBLUEdot (www.bluedotregister.org), created detailed solar feasibility assessments for each of these building sites that included:
- A detailed concept design for solar PV array.
- A detailed solar PV project cost estimate.
- Calculation of 30-year lifespan year-by-year solar energy production projections.
- Solar array financial performance and payback calculations.
The results of Re-Energize Your Business show that each of these sites have superb potential for solar PV installations. The capacity represented by these buildings is over 675,000 kwh annually and the arrays could save these building owners over $1.6 million in energy costs.
Photo Caption: Maplewood Business Solar Potential Study
