Whether or not tapping the sun to help power the Barton County Courthouse and Jail is feasible remains unclear, but county officials are taking the first steps to see if solar energy is even a viable option. The goal would be to trim the county’s steep utility bills.
This was the topic of a special meeting Thursday afternoon in the County Commission courthouse chamber, called at the request of District 1 Commissioner Kirby Krier, He has advocated for solar panels on the buildings’ rooftops, seeing it as a way to save money.
“This has the opportunity to be successful,” Krier said. “We could look for grants to pay for it.”
He, and commissioners Jon Prescott and Jennifer Schartz were joined by other county officials, representatives from Wheatland Electric and P&S Electric and the City of Ellinwood.
It was the consensus of those gathered that there are a lot of unanswered questions.
Looming the largest is the county’s ongoing project to install a new heating, ventilating and air conditioning system at the courthouse. Project engineers Orazem & Scalora Engineering of Wichita should have its final design completed by next week.
“How much would this slow down the HVAC project?” said Schartz, District 5 commissioner. She was concerned that throwing this at the design team now would delay the work and increase the price tag.
So, to see if this is worth the effort, commissioners asked P&S Electric to study the roofs and determine if there was enough of a footprint to accommodate the needed panels. This information would be forwarded to OES so the engineers can run the numbers.
As for the courthouse, its electric bills run about $5,000 per month, county officials said. For the jail, they are about $50,000 for a year.
With both buildings, rooftop space is limited, due to the existing HVAC units. With the century-old courthouse, there are also structural concerns.
Adding to the space problem is that the county only owns one foot of land around the courthouse. The rest of the Courthouse Square property is owned by the City of Great Bend.
To provide the needed peak power for the courthouse (about 100 kilowatts) would require enough panels to cover roughly 150 by 400 square feet. The cost for just the panels would be around $200,000.
Wheatland Project Manager Mark Kircher said the solar could help the county reduce its power consumption load. This, in turn, would benefit Wheatland and all of the cooperative’s members.
There is also the opportunity for the county to sell excess power back to the grid, he said. However, this would be handled by Sunflower Electric, not Wheatland, and the process is lengthy and costly.
