On November 10, at their regular meeting, Sussex County, Delaware officials endorsed a consultancy recommendation to use $648,000 from the federal government to install more than 400 solar panels to power the county’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC-911) east of Georgetown.

If approved by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2010, the expenditure would represent the most significant use of renewable energy technology in the county to date, accruing $12,000 in energy cost savings per year, as well as $30,000 annually in revenue via renewable energy credits, or $1.3 million over the next 25 years), based on current and projected value for RECs. The system would also allow the county to take advantage of a one-time state rebate of more than $200,000.

The original grant, of $40,000, via the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (2009), or ARRA, was among the first 20 in the nation to be awarded for solar projects.

Sussex officials called on Harbeson-based Flexera Inc., a solar panel installer, to eventually place the 408 panels next to the EOC, a one-year-old building that is the most energy-efficient of the eight County-owned buildings under consideration – the choice clearly motivated by a desire to make the most of every kilowatt generated by the solar array.

The panels are projected to produce more than 120,000 kilowatt hours a year which – fed into the electricity grid – helps utilities meet the state’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS) through the sale of the aforementioned renewable energy credits, or RECs (also called SRECs, for the solar component of the RPS.

Delaware’s RPS, originally passed in July 2005 (Senate Bill 74) and amended in July 2007, began in 2007 and called for one percent of total retail sales to be derived from renewable energy, with increases incrementally ramping up the total requirement to 20 percent by 2019.

Once approved, the Sussex County project should take from three to six months, with a caveat that it be completed by August of 2011 to qualify under the state’s renewable energy mandate.