Georgetown, Del., Nov. 10, 2009: Sussex County is turning to the hot yellow sun to save some cold, hard green.

County Council, at its Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009, meeting, endorsed a consultant’s recommendation to use a $648,000 federal grant to install more than 400 solar panels that would produce electricity for the County’s Emergency Operations Center just east of Georgetown. The panels would draw on sunlight, converting it into electricity that would help power the EOC-911 center and also be sold on the regional electrical grid.

Such a project, the most significant use of renewable energy technology in County government ever, would net the County an annual savings of more than $12,000 in electricity costs, generate another $30,000 annually in new revenue and yield a one-time State rebate of more than $200,000 for adopting the technology.

County officials hailed the project as an investment that will pay real dividends over the next two decades. Based on estimates presented Tuesday, Sussex County stands to earn as much as $1.3 million in revenue over the next 25 years by using the grant for solar technology.

“It’s hard to argue with dollars and cents like that,” County Council President Vance C. Phillips said. “Sussex County's goal has been to capture these federal dollars to make investments that will help our local economy. We will continue to aggressively pursue such funding so long as its makes sense and can bring home taxpayers' hard-earned dollars with no unreasonable strings attached.”

County Administrator David B. Baker announced in August that Sussex had won an initial $40,000 grant award, among the first 20 in the nation, by way of the federal American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009, also known as the ‘stimulus’ package. The grant was to develop a strategy detailing the County’s energy needs and how new technologies and methods could be used to meet those needs.

The County sought bids and selected Flexera Inc. of Harbeson, Del., to develop the strategy, which was unveiled Tuesday. Under that strategy, 408 solar panels would be installed next to the EOC, a 1-year-old building that is the most energy efficient of the eight County buildings studied.

The panels would produce enough electricity, more than 120,000 kilowatt hours a year, to shave approximately $12,350 off the EOC’s $86,000 annual electric bill, said Gina A. Jennings, director of the County’s Accounting Division. Additionally, the panels would produce enough electricity into the regional power grid that the County could earn $30,000 a year in renewable energy certificates, which utilities must buy to comply with State requirements.

And, as a bonus, the project would qualify for another $211,000 in rebates from the State of Delaware. “We would apply that money to other initiatives,” Ms. Jennings said. “This project will more than pay for itself. It can leverage more money, and even more opportunities for savings, creating a revenue stream that is especially necessary in today’s economic climate.”

With County Council’s endorsement of the proposal, the strategy now will be submitted to the U.S. Department of Energy for review later this month. If approved, the federal government will release the $648,000 grant to the County to implement the strategy.

County officials hope to have approval for the project from the Department of Energy in early 2010. Once approved, construction would take an estimated three to six months, and must be completed by August 2011.

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