Renewable energy developer Green Lantern Solar completed a solar array for Chroma, a certified B Corporation in the precision optical filter industry. The 500-kW ground-mount array is producing enough energy to offset one-third of Chroma’s annual energy expenses.
“This array will reduce Chroma’s operating expenses and have a real impact on its sustainability goals,” said Weston Martin, director of sustainable partnerships, Green Lantern Solar. “We’re gratified to work with companies like Chroma who are taking real steps to demonstrate how costs savings and a clean energy future can be achieved.”
The virtual net-metered solar project was developed, constructed and is owned and operated by Green Lantern Solar and is the company’s most recently completed in its home state of Vermont. The energy produced by the 1,870 solar module array is approximately 958,200-kWh.
“As a certified employee-owned B Corporation, Chroma is committed to sustainable and socially responsible business practices,” said Newell Lessell, CEO of Chroma. “This new solar array will enable us to significantly reduce our carbon footprint even as our business continues to grow.”
News item from Green Lantern Solar
Solarman says
Grab some of that daily energy generation and store it in a microgrid and set this microgrid energy storage system up for arbitrage and one can use the energy stored to offset high use electricity capacity fees and use off peak grid energy at night to start up and run the plant in the early morning hours. This type of energy control can allow a 50% perhaps even more savings on the electricity budget each month. Having the equipment and storage capacity to “program” around high energy cost times of the day can save the business more money in electricity costs than the overall output of the solar PV array. The “concept” of grid tied has become cliche and disrespected by the rote IOU electric utilities. Go back 20 years and the utilities “laughed” at early adopters, then became “concerned” about residential solar PV adopters, now they are “afraid” of residential solar PV adopters and want solar PV adopters to pay them money to use the grid as a place to dump overgeneration during peak solar PV generation during the day. This is pushing more and more ratepayers towards, “grid agnostic”. Now what happens when the “customers” don’t need the grid or the electric company so much anymore?