The credit of enabling South Texas’ Art Museum located in Corpus Christi to be powered partially by solar goes to Green Mountain Energy, a retail provider of carbon offset and cleaner energy solutions and its customers.
The museum’s first solar array system was funded by Green Mountain’s Sun Clubsm amounting to $140,000. This amount was contributed by the Green Mountain’s customers who paid an extra $5 on their monthly electric bill.
The 25.38 kW solar array mounted on the museum’s roof is the second thing offered by Green Mountain and it is assumed to be first and largest in Corpus Christi to power South Texas’ art museum. The solar panels will enable the museum to reduce its energy costs and carbon emission and in addition make the patrons and visitors aware of the advantages of solar energy.
This solar system is anticipated to generate over 30,000 kWh of pollution-free electricity from sunlight, annually. In addition, this system is projected to cut off more than 42,000 lbs of CO2 every year. This quantity is equal to turning off the lights of 12,000 houses or removing more than 1,300 cars from the road for one day.
In the museum, there will be an informational kiosk that provides a display of energy output from the solar system, data on solar energy, a sign indicating the environmental advantages of the array. Also a monitoring website will be connected to the solar array for displaying the information on the actual energy output. The installation of the solar panels was done by Hill Country Ecopower.