Olympia’s Hands On Children’s Museum is going solar.
The City Council this month approved a lease with the Hands On Children’s Community Project to install solar panels on the museum, which is under construction near East Bay.
The city built and owns the building and is leasing it to the museum.
The system, a project of Tangerine Solar of Seattle and PureSolar Inc. of Tumwater, doesn’t require city funding. The city will lease space on the building’s rooftop to the company for $1 per year for nine years.
Tangerine and PureSolar are the developers and are setting up the project; individual investors will own shares in the solar project and will be paid in state incentives, said Rich Phillips, president of PureSolar. The developers will get a commission.
“I hope … it’s just the start of a lot of projects to come,” Phillips said. “We’re trying to build an industry, and Thurston County is a really good place to start.”
The LLC will be responsible for installing the system in the next year and maintaining it.
In turn, the city and museum will benefit from a system capable of producing about $7,000 to $8,000 worth of energy a year.
“There’s no cost to the museum to use the power,” Assistant City Manger Jay Burney said. “That’s money that they’ll save.”
The $18.5 million museum project is set to be completed by next summer. The museum will have three stories and 28,000 square feet, plus about 30,000 square feet of outdoor exhibit space. The outside shell of the building is complete, and Berschauer Phillips of Olympia is finishing the inside of the building.
Besides being solar, it has several energy-saving features, including free heat and cooling from gas generated by the nearby LOTT sewage-treatment plant.
“We’re going to have two innovative systems for our utilities,” said Patty Belmonte, the museum’s executive director.
From the outset of the museum project, she said, “We envisioned not only a green-built building” but to be a “leader in the country for green practices in museums.”
Tangerine has proposed putting solar panels on City Hall, but that agreement won’t be ready for the council to consider for another couple of weeks, Burney said. Among details to be worked out is the size of the solar array.
The solar project is among the first few in the state, enabled by legislation passed in 2005 and amended in 2009 and 2010.
It allows the state to pay up to $1.08 per kilowatt hour. The state would get its money from Puget Sound Energy, which saves utility tax money on electricity it doesn’t have to generate.
There are 16 completed community solar projects statewide, said Phil Lou, solar-energy specialist at the Washington State University Extension Energy Program, in an interview last month.
Among them is Olympia’s first project of the sort, at the Olympia Farmers Market. A dozen market vendors and customers are investing in the panels, which were installed earlier this year.
Burney said he has heard questions about why the city went with the first group to approach it about solar rather than open the possibility of solar panels to multiple groups.
“They were ready to go with a proposal,” he said of Tangerine and PureSolar. “They had an investor group … lined up and ready to go.”
Burney noted other city buildings could be candidates for solar projects, such as the Washington Center for the Performing Arts and the Olympia Center.
“We’re going to be looking for any and all opportunities for our existing buildings now and into the future that would be good candidates for community solar,” he said.
Matt Batcheldor: 360-704-6869 mbatcheldor@theolympian.com
