Garfield County Gets a Solar-Powered Ride at Fairgrounds

County Commissioner Mike Samson cutting the ceremonial ribbon. Photo: Cam Burns

Garfield County is becoming one of the brightest spots under the clean energy sun. On Thursday, April 21, local and state officials cut a symbolic ribbon on a set of electricity inverters on the north side of the riding arena at the Garfield County Fairgrounds in Rifle. The inverters convert direct current (DC) power from the recently installed solar photovoltaic panels on the roof of the arena to alternating current (AC) power, which can be used in most residential and commercial buildings.

The installation represents the last on-site renewable energy system included in the Garfield New Energy Communities Initiative. To date, 16 installations adding up to more than 370 kilowatts have been installed on community and government facilities throughout the region, one of multiple components of a Department of Local Affairs grant first awarded to the region in 2008, and wrapping up this year. Local and state officials turned out for the ribbon-cutting. Elyse Ackerman, regional manager for DOLA, explained that it was the ability of the communities in Garfield County to work together that "brought the grant here."

"DOLA typically puts it money into physical things that the county or town is going to own: a building, wiring, plumbing, asphalt, the list goes on and on," she said. "In this project we were asked to invest in a cost savings that the county is going to experience. While it's real and tangible, that wasn't a physical thing that we could put our name on. And that was a really difficult concept for us to wrap our heads around."

County officials, however, we able to show the benefits of the project, she said. "They really forced DOLA and our state controllers that oversee these grants and how the money gets spent to look at the long-term benefits of this particular method that this was going to have for the county," Ackerman said.

This project is the result of collaborative efforts between Garfield Clean Energy, which is managed by CLEER (Clean Energy Economy for the Region), and Garfield County. Ken Olson, of Sol Energy in Carbondale, which installed the photovoltaic panels, explained that the 440 modules will produce about 140,000 kilowatt-hours per year, which will be about 57 percent of historical energy use of the building, one of the largest energy users in the county. A typical U.S. home uses about 8,900 kWh/year. In its first month of operation, the system produced 62 percent of the building's electricity, Olson said.

As Garfield County commissioner Mike Samson noted, just before he took and oversized pair of scissors and snipped the ceremonial ribbon, "Basically five jobs were created when this was being built. We like that-we like job creation in Garfield County. And of course, the savings-I've heard it'll be close to $300,000 over twenty years. I like that. And lastly, how much did the county pay for the installation of this? Nothing, because of the power purchase agreement. And that's a good deal, too."

The power purchase agreement to which Samson referred is a deal in which a third-party entity, in this case Rockwell Energy, received state and federal grants to install the system. Garfield County, meanwhile, offered the roof space, and agreed to buy power from the $385,000 system for twenty years. The new riding arena installation represents the biggest power purchase agreement in the county to date.

"The power purchase agreement is a financing tool that can be used to bring the job creation, energy savings, and locally produced energy benefits to many more sites," said Jeff Dickinson, a green building and renewable energy expert with CLEER, who coordinated the logistics of site and contractor selection, and with Garfield County staff worked on many of the details to make the project a reality. CLEER, is the nonprofit organization that developed the original Garfield New Energy Communities proposal and manages delivery of the programs.

Rifle Mayor Keith Lambert, who sits on the Garfield Clean Energy advisory board, noted that through various governments clean energy efforts in Garfield County that more than fifty projects to make homes, businesses, and government buildings more energy efficient have been implemented in the last few years. "There's lots going on and we hope to continue into the future," he said.

Ackerman noted that what's happening in Garfield County sets an example for other Colorado communities. "This really has set a trend that other counties can now follow," she said.