The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office has installed a solar and battery system expected to save $12 million over 25 years, reduce emissions, and improve energy reliability.
The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office has installed a solar and battery system expected to save $12 million over 25 years, reduce emissions, and improve energy reliability.
The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office has installed a solar and battery system expected to save $12 million over 25 years, reduce emissions, and improve energy reliability.
The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office has completed a solar and battery system designed to save $12 million over the next 25 years while reducing energy use, lowering emissions, and improving energy reliability.
The project includes a solar carport system with panels installed over parking areas and a large battery storage system using Tesla batteries.
Officials say the environmental impact is equivalent to taking about 200 cars off the road each year.
Concerns about battery safety arose after the Moss Landing battery fire, but officials emphasized that the newer lithium iron phosphate batteries used in this project have a lower risk of overheating.
“There were a lot of concerns from the community about those batteries being safe. Well, this is the new generation batteries, and the type of batteries that burned up in the Moss Landing fire; although they were lithium batteries, they were an older lithium battery,” Sheriff Tina Nieto said. “These are the newer ones, so they don’t have the same chemicals within the batteries, and they’re also more resilient to have what they call the thermal runaway that we hear about so much now.”
The sheriff’s office worked closely with the County of Monterey, Mynt Systems, and Sunrock Distributed Generation to ensure safety planning for the project.
Taxpayers will benefit from the funding structure, as the project was financed through a power purchase agreement.
This means there was no upfront cost to the county, which will purchase electricity at a set rate over time.
“It’s a savings, and for the taxpayers, this is important because we had no upfront capital cost because of the partnership, and then we’re going to save on our electricity bill, because we’re going with the cleaner solar energy. It’s very exciting,” Nieto said.
The project, which had been in development for years, was completed around Christmas.
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