Downtown is Going Green - Installing Solar Panels for Energy Savings

Sheen Parveen
FOX 13 meteorologist

TAMPA - As the summer heat bears down on us, electric bills rise. But if you can't beat it, you can always join it, and that's just what Hillsborough County is doing.

Finally, solar panels are ready to fuel three county public buildings: The old courthouse, tax collector's office, and All People's Life Center.

Randy Klindworth has been waiting for this moment for nearly 10 years, and he is overjoyed.

"It's a neat thing and I wish more people would do it," the energy manager for Hillsborough County said. "It's renewable energy and we need more of that."

The solar panels were all funded by federal stimulus dollars, something Klindworth says will save taxpayers money in the long run. Eco Technologies in Sarasota won the bid and believes solar power is cleaner and more readily available than coal.

Andrew Tanner is one of the owners of Eco Technologies, and he explains, "It just makes sense, as the cost of energy does keep rising and we have a finite amount of coal, that we do as much as we can to harness the renewable resources we have on our planet," said Andrew Tanner, one of the owners of Eco Technologies. "The sun is really a nuclear power plant in the sky."

If the solar panels look familiar to you, check your calculator. They were both invented by the same man.

The application process is simple; the panels just stick right on.

"It's going to add only one pound per square foot to the whole roof," Tanner explained, citing the thinness of each panel. "A normal crystalline module would add about three pounds per square foot."

Perfect for Florida, the panels withstand 150 mph winds and are 15 percent more effective than traditional solar panels, which will likely be a positive impact on the county's bottom line.

"We're saving over two million dollars a year now," explained Klindworth. "My goal is more like three and a half, four million dollars a year, so we're getting there, but we got a ways to go."

Once the project is completed in September, the tax collector's office and courthouse will make up the largest solar panel array in a downtown metropolitan area in the country.

Little by little, the "sunshine state" is right on the money.

 

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