The Greenbelt Co-op Supermarket and the Greenbelt Baptist Church soon won’t be the only establishments in town with a roof-top solar array. Solar panels are going up at the administration complex of Greenbelt Homes Inc. (GHI) housing cooperative on Hamilton Place. According to Steve Skolnik, vice president of the GHI board of directors, solar panels will be installed on the roofs of the main office building, warehouse and carpentry shop, and a ground-based array will be set up in the yard behind the buildings.
Sustainable Energy Systems (SES) of Frederick, Md., owns the solar panels and is installing them at no cost to GHI. GHI has entered into a power purchase agreement with SES, who will sell the power produced by the panels to GHI at a fixed rate that is lower than Pepco’s. This lower electricity price is expected to offset about one-quarter of GHI’s electric bill. Energy use beyond what can be generated by the solar array will be purchased from Pepco, but the combined cost of electricity from both sources should represent a considerable savings to GHI. Skolnik expects the solar array to be operational in February, 2021.
GHI Home Solar
A few GHI members have recently installed roof-mounted solar photovoltaic energy systems on their homes. Skolnik says there is a “strong positive benefit” to members who do it, but the tree cover in the community is a discouragement. Rather than purchasing and installing their own solar arrays, some GHI members have subscribed to community solar through Neighborhood Sun, which provides energy from three solar farms in Prince George’s County.
A Solar Pioneer
This isn’t GHI’s first foray into solar power. In 1975, GHI entered into a cooperative agreement with Goddard Space Flight Center for a solar heat experimental project. The February 20, 1975 issue of the News Review stated that the signing of the agreement “may be the start of the most significant development in Greenbelt’s history since the federal sale of the original homes to Greenbelt Homes, Inc.” (greenbeltnewsreview.com/issues/GNR19750220.pdf). The Washington Star ran a feature story on the project and speculated that Greenbelt might be the first community in Prince George’s County to warm its homes with solar heat. The project got off to a bumpy start, however, when parts for the planned solar collectors were difficult and costly to procure, forcing the project to pare the original plan to include 16 homes. Solar collectors eventually were installed on four homes in 2 Court Southway (units A to D), with energy use and costs compared to the other four homes in the court with no solar panels.
In 1978, GHI received a grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for a second solar demonstration project, and solar panels were installed on the roof of one row of homes in 14 Court Ridge Road, to provide hot water to 20 homes in the court. Although both projects yielded electricity savings, the solar systems were considered costly to run and maintain, so the “solar homes” were converted to conventional electric heat and hot water in 1982 as part of GHI’s first community-wide rehabilitation project.
For More Information
Anyone interested in GHI’s early solar projects can read about them in the News Review archives (greenbeltnewsreview.com/archives). Online issues from 1964 through 1982 were scanned from newsprint originals as part of the Greenbelt Archive Project (see greenbeltarchive.org), replacing the harder-to-read microfilm-based pdfs that had been on the Archives website. More of the new pdfs will be uploaded over the coming months.
