St. John’s Episcopal’s new solar panels sit on top of their roof.
By James Kinneen
Hometown Weekly Reporter
While they have already had solar energy for eighteen years, last week, St. John’s Episcopal Parish completed an installation that will provide the church with over one hundred percent of the energy it needs. The 58 newly installed solar panels will produce 20 MWHR (megawatts per hour) annually when combined with the 3 MWHR the eighteen-year-old system already generates. It’s estimated this will be about 8MWHR more than the church will need to function, which will allow them to sell their excess energy to another nonprofit at a discounted price.
The process of St. John’s getting solar power was a long one. Eighteen years ago, the church combined with First Parish Church, the high school and the fire department in a project which culminated with St. John’s obtaining enough panels to cover about twenty percent of their school wing roof. About two years ago, while looking for opportunities to fill the rest of the roof, the parish teamed with three other places of worship in Westwood (First Parish, Temple Beth David and First Baptist) in what was called the “Westwood Inner Faith Solar Campaign” to get a common bid for installation in hopes of cutting some of the costs.
“If a commercial entity were to go out there and install solar, they would be able to get solar tax incentives, but because houses of worship and other nonprofits are tax exempt, they don’t qualify for those kinds of federal land state tax exemptions,” parishioner Brian Davie explained. “So, by combining these four houses of worship and working with Resonant energy [a Boston based nonprofit], we were able to put together a proposal in March of 2019.”
St. John’s Episcopal was the last of the four houses of worship to get their solar energy going (though the Resonant website doesn’t have their panel photo posted yet). But while others are not able to power their entire buildings with solar power, St. John’s is planning on selling the discount energy they have to nonprofits that cannot have solar energy - like churches with slate roofs that can’t hold the panels.
St. John’s received a $10,000 grant from a west coast nonprofit promoting solar called “The Left Coast Fund,” and received a low interest loan from the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts that they anticipate being able to pay off in around ten years, on what was ultimately around a $60,000 project. Noting the diocese has a green energy initiative, Brian Davie noted this is just one of the green projects St. John’s has engaged in, with more planned for the future.
“We’ve done a number of projects over the years. We’ve added insulation to the exterior of our church. We’ve insulated the rectory. Another big project we did about eight years ago was converting from oil to natural gas. And looking forward, one of the things we want to do with this excess energy is to potentially look at geothermal sometime in the next ten years as a way of heating the church, and to try to at least minimize the amount of fossil fuel we use.”
