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Solar for Safety and Success is aimed at increasing access to solar on Port Arthur commercial buildings, providing job training for Port Arthur residents, and building resilience to power outages in the community.
Community Resilience Needs in Port Arthur
The Solar for Safety and Success team gathered opinions on power outages and power solutions like solar in your community.
Residents report that power outages are common throughout Port Arthur—less than 16% of residents say they experience no power outages. Outages might be more significant outside of the Westside and Lewis Dr. neighborhoods; a larger percentage of residents in the wider Port Arthur area report outages multiple times a year.
Residents reported some or a lot of difficulty finding a shelter that met their needs.
About 20% of residents across the wider Port Arthur area reported long distances traveled to reach emergency shelters as well as lengthy stays in emergency shelters. Residents in the Westside and Lewis Dr. areas reported more difficulty getting to emergency shelters than residents of the wider Port Arthur area.
Increased availability of information is needed. Officials should focus on multiple pathways of information with an emphasis on getting official information onto television, radio, and social media outlets to ensure residents who lack access to one or more of these sources are not missing critical information.
Residents are interested in solar. Nearly all have a positive or neutral opinion about solar.
Residents would like more job opportunities, including solar jobs. Through 3S, GTEC provided job training to 8 students in the Port Arthur area.
Learn New Skills!
Interested in a new energy job? Golden Triangle Empowerment Center trains residents in electrical, roofing, construction, and solar installation skills.
Visit gtec-triangle.org to learn more about job training.
For questions, call (409) 982-0522 or email info@ gtec-triangle.org.
Commercial Building Owners: Is Your Building a Good Candidate for Solar?
Are you worried about power outages or your energy bill?
Do you want to know if solar and battery storage are right for your Port Arthur building?
Are you interested in learning about the ways you can support the Port Arthur community during a power outage?
In designing a system, it is important to maximize cost savings by sizing it to onsite power needs. Improving energy efficiency prior to installing solar can help reduce energy demand, meaning less solar capacity would be needed, reducing solar capital costs and energy bills going forward. Cost savings can be redirected to pay for solar installation costs over time. Sizing solar for maximal cost savings helps ensure the savings from solar ends up paying for itself. Done correctly, this payback occurs soon enough that there is a net positive cashflow well before the end of the life of the solar panels.
Get your building evaluated for onsite power resources!
Contact HARC to have your building evaluated.
View NREL's building analysis report at this link.
Commercial Building Owners: Is Solar Affordable for Your Building?
Four building portfolios in Port Arthur were analyzed for their potential for photovoltaic (PV) solar alone or alongside battery storage. Solar alone provides clean energy but no resilience. Solar, battery storage, and a generator could provide resilience, keeping a building's power online during a community-wide outage. All of the buildings had positive net present value for solar-only installations and over 2/3 of buildings analyzed had positive net present values for solar+storage+generator installations. HARC is working with these partners to identify funding mechanisms for possible solar installations.
Generating solar energy onsite can reduce energy costs, as solar generated offsets electricity that would be purchased from the grid. In the Entergy service area, excess solar generated onsite could be sold back to the grid at a price that is lower than the rate customer’s pay for electricity. Because of this price difference, it is most impactful to use electricity onsite rather than plan to return it to the grid, so maximizing this value by sizing a system to your building’s demands is important. However, for any excess power you do generate, you can receive a bill credit that reduces your electricity bill.
There are incentives and financing options available for solar. Find out what options are available for your building at: https://betterbuildingssolutioncenter.energy.gov/financing-navigator/explore
Stakeholders and Supporting Partners
Solar for Safety and Success is funded by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory through the Solar Energy Innovation Network Round 3. Project partners and key stakeholders include:
Community In- Power and Development Association
HARC
Golden Triangle Empowerment Center
Entergy Texas
City of Port Arthur
Port Arthur Independent School District
Lamar State College
Port Arthur Transit
Clean Energy Fund of Texas
Renewable Energy Partners
Social Wealth Partners
Solar Energy Loan Fund
Port Arthur Residents
Image credits: Header commercial rooftop solar installation from Nuno Marques, Unsplash; community photos from CIDA and HARC; Rooftop solar installation from Peteonline22, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons; Commercial solar installation from Roofjockey, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons; Solar carport from Flicker02, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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