Centerre Government Contracting LLC of Denver, Colorado and E Light Wind and Solar Inc. of Englewood have created a consortium (called Centerre/E Light Wind and Solar Inc.) to install solar photovoltaic panels on 35 acres at the Denver Federal Center.

Centerre, a private company with a staff of 5, received a contract in 2008 from the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs to renovate its cadet gym at a fixed price of $14,801,775, so the issue of experience is moot.

E Light Wind and Solar has several solar projects under its belt, including 8,118 solar power panels installed in 2008 on three parking garages that cover 125,000 square feet of the Belmar shopping district in Lakewood. The massive retail, entertainment and residential living complex now generates 1.75 megawatts of power from the solar system, which represents about 5 percent of the electricity it consumes.

E Light also installed a residential solar photovoltaic system in the Denver suburb of Stapleton rated at 2.7 kilowatts and supplying 30 percent of the home’s electrical needs, not to mention the 1.6-megawatt project at Inland Empire Utilities Agency in Ontario, California, where 3,718 ground-mounted solar panels and 3,388 tracker panels provide electricity to help run the district’s wastewater treatment plant.

The recently formed consortium’s Denver Federal Center project will be funded by $17.3 million from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or stimulus, which will supply 14,612 solar panels to be mounted on three buildings at the Federal Center, located in the western suburb of Lakewood.

The contract was awarded in December of 2009, by the General Services Administration, or GSA, an independent federal agency which facilitates government procurement and manages federally owned property.

The Denver Federal Center has a stated commitment of becoming the most sustainable federal campus in the U.S. by 2020. To that end, it already has a solar park, built by SunEdison, which became operational in 2008 and provides about 10 percent of the Center’s electricity needs, or 1.6 million kilowatt-hours per year (enough to power about 145 homes)

The cost of that installation was $6.9 million, and its operation prevents 1,244 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year from burning coal – the most common source of electricity generation among Colorado’s largely coal-burning power plants.

In fact, according to carbon emission experts, Colorado currently derives 70 percent of its electricity from burning coal, and the resultant pollution has led various business groups, medical associations, environmental organizations and citizen’s support groups to try to either close or mitigate emissions from the Cherokee coal-fired power plant, located in North Denver.