St. Tammany Parish has entered the solar age, with the installation of solar panels on the roof of the Pavilion at the Koop Drive Trailhead of the Tammany Trace, and on the roof of the caretaker’s cottage at Camp Salmen Nature Park in Slidell.
As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, money was allocated to the U.S. Department of Energy to provide funding to local governments to meet environmental goals of reducing total energy usage and improving energy efficiency in buildings and transportation. This grant program is called the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) Program. St. Tammany Parish has utilized the solar panels to offset some energy costs both at the Pavilion and at the caretaker’s cottage. These two projects are two of the efforts undertaken by St. Tammany Parish to improve energy efficiency.
In addition, several energy efficiency improvements were made to the Parish Administration building on Koop Drive, the DHH/State Building on Koop Drive, and the Parish Engineering Building on Koop Drive, all of which contain parish offices.
The efficiency improvements at these locations included: replacement of air conditioning units with high efficiency units, installation of occupancy sensors for interior lighting, replacement of exterior lights with high efficiency LEDs, recalibration of HVAC flow, replacement of pipe insulation, and automation HVAC system upgrades. These improvements will result in annual electricity savings of $37,000 for the Administration Building, $32,000 for the DHH/State Building, and $2,000 for the Engineering Building.
CLICK THE LINK BELOW THE PICTURES TO VIEW REAL TIME SOLAR SAVINGS.
