Conserving energy
Holy Wisdom Monastery installed 463 new solar panels in 2014. The total solar capacity at 145.3 kW will provide approximately 60% of the monastery building’s energy use or approximately 45% of the retreat & guest house and monastery’s combined electricity use. We are grateful to H&H Solar for their fine work with the installation. H&H also assisted us in securing a grant for $46,896 from Focus on Energy to defray the costs.
In the first six months after the new panels were installed, 116,543 lb. CO2 emissions were saved from entering the environment. The effects of this is the equivalent of:
- planting 2,993 trees
- turning off 232,518 light bulbs for an entire day.
As part of the monastery building project, completed in 2009, we installed photovoltaic panels on the southwest slope of the assembly room roof to generate 13% of the total energy cost. The panels installed in 2014 work in conjunction with the original panels.
Solar light fixtures are a distinctive feature of the monastery building parking lot and the sinks in the bathrooms in the monastery building turn on with energy generated from the sun.
Track solar energy production
Learn more about the effects of the solar panels at Holy Wisdom Monastery by tracking the energy usage and solar production here:
