Thursday, June 27, 2013

Large solar project in Downtown Bellingham highlights innovative landlord and neighborhood cooporation

When local property owner John Blethen built six live/work condos in downtown Bellingham six years ago, he knew that solar power was a smart choice for the neighborhood. He had the condos, which feature commercial space on the bottom floor and a living space for the proprietor on the top floor, built using the current best solar-ready construction practices in anticipation of the eventual installation of solar arrays on each of the six roofs. That meant positioning the angled roofs to capture the maximum solar potential and selecting a roofing material that made the mounting system really easy. The units were also wired for solar at the time they were built to drastically minimize the electrical work required at installation. The only missing piece of the puzzle was that actually installing the solar panels on the unoccupied condos didn’t quite make financial sense. Yet.