Earth Care Congregation News
Westminster has been an "Earth Care Congregation" for about six years, which is a designation created by the Presbyterian Church (USA) for churches that take a particular interest in restoring creation as a central concern, to be incorporated into the life and mission of the church at every level. Over the years we have undertaken various projects to help reduce our environmental footprint. Currently Westminster is engaged in reducing our reliance on fossil fuel energy thanks to a small solar array on the roof of the Fellowship Hall kitchen, and by financially supporting wind energy expansion in the mid-west. Both actions were proposed by WPC's Green Team and underwritten by Session. Here’s a short summary of these projects:
Alt-Energy (now Tiger Solar) installed panels about eight years ago under a PPA (producer purchase agreement) in which Westminster pays 10 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity produced. This rate is less than about 13.3 cents/kwh normally charged by Dominion, so there’s a small cost savings to the church in having these panels. Tiger Solar owns the array formed by 16 panels that sit atop the flat kitchen roof, and we received tax credits available at the time for the array cost. WPC’s initial outlay was around $1000 for an additional meter. Tiger performs maintenance as needed. On a sunny day, the peak array output is about 3500 watts, less than the rated amount due to the flat-roof installation and some tree shading. The yearly energy production has been around 10,000 kwh, averaging to about 27 kwh/day. This is comparable to the consumption on a medium-sized all-electric home in the U.S.
On the topic of wind energy, since 2022, WPC has contracted with Arcadia (now Sol Systems) to pay a 0.3 cents/kwh ‘surcharge’ on up to 14,000 kwh consumption per month from Dominion, as a means of supporting wind energy development. The net cost to WPC is about $51/month. Since initiating the contract WPC has ‘underwritten’ 335,000 kwh of wind energy.