You could say that three years ago EWI saw the light at the end of the tunnel. More accurately, it was the light, warmth, and savings from the top of our roof. Efforts to take a more proactive role in our energy consumption resulted in the recent installation of three solar arrays – totaling 150 kW – on the roof of our high bay.
Separately, we’ve contracted with regional grid operator Eneroc to participate in a demand-response program. That means that in exchange for reducing our non-essential energy consumption during peak usage times, we’re able to drop our consumption costs, significantly.
We now can generate and feed approximately 65kWh back into the grid on an annual basis. The benefits to us and our members are tremendous, letting us free up our cash flow to focus on things we want to focus on like redirecting savings back into R&D. With electricity rates sure to increase our investment in solar becomes even more valuable over the life of the panels, providing us with a measure of protection against rate increases.
The next steps include installation of an energy dashboard so we can monitor our energy consumption on a daily – and even hourly – basis. And we’re developing a green initiative to further reduce our environmental impact. Awareness lets us make our footprint even smaller.
Interested in reducing your own energy consumption? Contact us at [email protected].We’d be more than happy to lead the way, and share our experiences with you. We can’t take you for a tour of our arrays, but I can tell you it is very cool up there. Feels like you’re in the midst of solar panels that go on forever. From that viewpoint, the future looks very bright.