As early as this summer, the City of Yelm will no longer have to pay an electricity bill at its community center, which can also serve as an emergency operations center in case of emergency in the near future.
This project was approved by the Yelm City Council during the Feb. 12 meeting, Yelm Community Center will receive a solar and battery backup system, with help from Olympia Community Solar and Sphere Solar.
Cody Colt, Yelm’s public works director, said parts for the installation of the system were ordered once the council approved entering a contract with Sphere Solar for the equipment, materials and installation of a solar and battery backup system at the Yelm Community Center.
He expects the solar panels to be “up and running” before the summer season but anticipates the battery system to take a while to arrive.
The city received a $220,000 grant for the Community Center project, and Colt added that another $90,000 is considered “match money.”
“It is reimbursable. We can get that money back from the federal government,” Colt said. “The full amount will be covered. We don’t have to pay anything out of pocket.”
Colt said this project is important for several reasons, not least of which is that Yelm Community Center uses a lot of electricity throughout the year from different events and activities.
“We spend about $30,000 a year on electricity for the community center. This would totally erase that bill,” Colt said. “The community center could serve as an emergency operations center. In time, where power is knocked out, whether it’s a natural disaster of some sort or an emergency which knocks the city’s power out, we can use the community center, because of the battery backup and solar panels, as an emergency operations center. Police [and] city services could work out of that building without the need to fuel up a generator.”
Colt said following the installation, the solar panels will provide electricity to the building as long as there is direct sunlight.
“Let’s say a big emergency occurs like the mountain erupting, and it blocks the sun for an amount of time. You’d have three to seven days, depending on the amount of usage, that those batteries can hold a charge without any sunlight at all,” Colt said. “If we’re very conservative, we can make it seven days without any amount of sunlight at all.”
The City of Yelm has an existing emergency operations center, the Yelm Public Safety building, but relies on a fuel-powered generator in case of an emergency. Colt said the City will incorporate the community center into the emergency operations center.
“If you have a natural disaster, getting fuel can also be difficult,” Colt said. “So this will be a balancing act of those two things, converting some of the operations that would’ve happened at the Public Safety building to the Community Center in our emergency operations plan. We will incorporate the community center into that plan, which already exists.”
Colt added that Yelm Community Center has been used as a shelter during extreme cold and extreme heat in the past.
“If there was a need, it could also serve as a staging area if there was a flood or some other kind of natural disaster where people needed somewhere to stay,” Colt said. “It could serve in those areas if people are displaced from natural-disaster causes.”
Mason Rolph, president of Olympia Community Solar, said the project will help the City of Yelm out financially and environmentally.
“On its own, we’ll reduce the city’s utility costs. Our estimate is that over the lifetime of the project, it will save the City of Yelm more than $230,000,” Rolph said. “The solar array is expected to reduce 32,000 pounds of CO2 per year. That 32,000 pounds of CO2 is equivalent to 58,500 miles not driven.”
Rolph added it’s also equivalent of charging 1.8 million cell phones as well as not burning 16,000 pounds of coal each year, equal to three-and-a-half homes’ worth of electricity.
“This project is possible because of a grant from Washington Department of Commerce, paired with the tax credits for solar projects. With those two funding sources, it funds 100% of the costs of the project,” Rolph said. “From the City’s perspective, they’ll come out at zero cost. A lot of the time I hear complaints about tax money being spent on clean energy, and in this case, it’s not the Yelm city taxpayer that’s paying for this. It’s coming from bigger federal and state sources.”
Projects like this, Rolph said, are made possible through grants.
“Even though we aren’t doing the actual work of installing the panels, getting the money there is the most important thing to make it happen,” Rolph said. “The savings that the city will experience means, rather than paying Yelm taxpayer money to Puget Sound Energy, they’ll save that money and can reinvest it in city services and making the quality of life better.”
