Central Library Goes Solar

Arlington Central Library is now partially powered by the sun.

This summer, the library installed a 60-kilowatt solar panel system that consists of 250 panels. Each panel can produce up to 240 watts, or the equivalent of 10 compact fluorescent light bulbs.

Since August, they have saved the library about $572, or the equivalent of 10,000 pounds of carbon, 100 trees or 525 barrels of oil.

Over the course of a year, the panels are expected to save the library 4 percent of its energy costs. They are designed to work with other energy-saving measures, from retrofitting doorways to turning off the lights when no one in is a room.

“It’s the beginning,” said Arlington County Board Member Mary Hynes. “We get to learn a lot from this one. Somebody’s got to do it first.”

The $290,000 project was paid for by the U.S. Department of Energy with stimulus dollars.

“They pay 100 percent,” said Joan Kelsch, Arlington County’s green building program manager. “So, for the county, the payback is immediate. Anything we save is money that can be used somewhere else.”

The Energy Department has deployed about half of the money it had available under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant program. It’s being distributed similar to the way money is divvied out under the Community Development Block Grant program.

So far, the program has paid for energy upgrades to 16,800 buildings totaling 158 million square feet – roughly the equivalent of 80,000 homes. The money also has been used to install renewable energy resources, support building code changes and install or retrofit 68,000 energy efficient streetlights.

“One of the things this demonstrates is that investment in green technology is critical to the overall recovery effort,” said Henry Kelly, the U.S. Department of Energy’s acting assistant secretary for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Kelly, too, is a lifelong Arlington resident.

“The Central Library is really a great place to be talking about this,” he said. “They are truly a reservoir of insight.”

Diane Kresh, director of the county’s Department of Libraries, said the panels were the “latest innovation” in the system when it comes to energy efficiency.

Two of the newest branches have been LEED certified, she said. Branches in Cherrydale and Columbia Pike will be getting new roofs, which will cause those buildings to be more energy efficient. And a new Capital Bikeshare station will be installed on the Quincy Street side of Central.

Central Library has a hard time keeping books about clean energy and green building on the shelves, she said.

“Keep on being green,” she said told the crowd of about 50 people just before the ceremonial ribbon-cutting.

Arlington and 28 other communities in Virginia have received more than $60 million for energy efficiency projects under the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant program.