Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) recently signed a power purchase agreement with Secure Futures LLC to install solar photovoltaic arrays on the roof of the Sadie Hartzler Library and on top of solar canopies in the north University Commons parking lot.

EMU, located in Harrisonburg, Virginia, in the western part of the state, serves about 1,600 students with a broad-based curriculum focused on cross-cultural studies, medical school and nursing school.

Staunton-based Secure Futures LLC is a solar developer and member of the tri-state (Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia) branch of the Solar Energy Industries Association, or SEIA.

Partnering with Southern Energy Management (SEM), a North Carolina-based energy efficiency and solar power company; Hunton & Williams LLP, a venture capital firm focused on solar technology; and the Reznick Group, a national leader in tax, accounting and business advisory services, Secure Futures offers solar photovoltaic systems under a unique, power purchase arrangement, or PPA.

In the case of EMU, the non-profit/private partnership will provide the university with solar systems rated at about 600 kilowatts, which will reduce energy consumption at least 12 percent, saving EMU about $2 million in electricity savings over the next 20 to 25 years – with no upfront costs.

In a best-case scenario, the savings may approach 16 percent, particularly if energy costs rise in the near future, as they are likely to do given Virginia’s 1999 electricity deregulation and (2009) “re-regulation”, which has public utilities like Dominion Power first asking for unreasonable rate increases and then agreeing to pay back part of the increase it started collecting in 2008.

More to the point, however, is the fact that Dominion generates its electricity from a mix that is 40 percent coal and 25 percent oil, giving the utility a distinctly “brown” footprint not much ameliorated by ventures into more natural gas generation – since natural gas is just a cleaner-burning form of coal.

Harrisonburg Electric Company, the very localized utility providing electricity to EMU, buys its electricity from the same generation mix, so it’s good to know that the EMU solar array will prevent at least 20,000 tons of carbon dioxide over the next quarter century.

The power purchase agreement will be accomplished by the university leasing space to Secure Futures, which will build, own and operate the array and sell the electricity back to the university at what has been described as a “competitive” rate.

Secure Futures will fund the installation through local, state and federal incentives (under ARRA, the incentive is a tax rebate for those firms with a “tax appetite”, or otherwise a cash grant for the same 30 percent). These incentives, when bundled, also offer some savings to EMU, according to the university’s Physical Plant Director, Eldon Kurtz.

The 600-kilowatt solar array is not EMU’s first run at solar energy. In June of 2009, the university hired California-based Altadena Energy & Solar to install a solar hot water system at the then-new Cedarwood Residence Hall, a LEED-certified and Energy-Star rated building.

The solar hot water system alone is expected to save more than 50 percent of the natural gas used for heating water for the 120-student dormitory over the course of a year.