Newberg Graphic Online

Church harnessing the sun

Sustainability — Family Life Church installs solar panels to cut energy consumption by up to 90 percent

• By: Laurent Bonczijk  
• Published: 1/8/2010 1:59:23 PM

Photo By: Gary AllenFree power —
In December, work crews installed 360 solar panels, arranged in three arrays, in Family Life Church’s back yard.

   Family Life Church, one of the largest congregations in town, will soon be saving thousands of dollars in annual electrical bills, thanks to three large arrays of solar panels installed in their backyard at no cost to them.
   While the panels, all 360 of them, were installed in December, work crews were still cleaning and tidying up this week and PGE was supposed to do the final hook-up Friday.
   “We’ve been discussing for several years ways to develop our property,” pastor Dave Benson said. The church uses about three and half of a six and a half acre parcel lodged between two manufacturing plants and Highway 219. The church’s location caught the eye of Matt Saager, a project manager for Oregon Electric Group who lives in Newberg.
   Saager pitched Benson about installing the nearly $600,000 system on his property. “I was almost like ‘that’s too good to be true,’” Benson said after Saager told him it wouldn’t cost the church any money up front and they would benefit from lower electrical rates.
   This was made possible because the church doesn’t pay taxes but OEG does. FLC therefore can not benefit from state and federal tax credit programs for renewable energy, but OEG can. And this is where the numbers all add up for businesses such as OEG. They install a solar array and recoup the costs through various tax breaks and incentives and by selling the electricity to FLC at the same cost PGE would, minus the usual governmental taxes and surcharges. After six years the solar array is sold to the church at “fair market value.”
   Saager said that because Internal Revenue Service rules prohibit OEG and the church from entering into a contract stating that the firm would donate the array to the church, the nonprofit entity typically pays only a nominal sum.
   The array installed is expected to produce 82.8 kilowatts; in comparison an array installed by the Oregon Department of Transportation at the junction of I-5 and I-205 is rated at 104 kilowatts.
   “It will provide 80 to 90 percent of our power from here on out,” Benson said, adding that he expects to save $2,000 in electrical costs annually while the system is under OEG’s ownership and more than $9,000 once it reverts to the church. Over the 30- to 40-year lifetime of the panels he expects FLC will save more than $300,000.
   As with most solar panel installations, FLC will now sport a electric meter that can run both ways. In the summer, when the church is using less electricity than it consumes, PGE will credit their account and bill them in the winter once their credit is exhausted.
   Saager said it’s typical for solar installations to be built to produce a little less than the planned energy needs of a building. The FLC project is the second largest one they’ve installed in Oregon this year.
   Matt Boland, the electrical foreman on the project, said OEG had only recently entered the solar market and that this project had been a good learning experience. He added that a large part of it was an adult-sized Erector set engineered for the site while the panels and electrical apparatus were standard, off-the-shelf technology.
   While some evangelical Christians have long argued that environmentalism is Earth worship and un-Christian, growing numbers have been emphasizing “creation care.” Benson said the church is striking a middle ground between the two since the solar power system isn’t distracting from the church’s core message and makes tremendous business sense.
   With this installation, Benson said, the “church really has an opportunity to lead the way. We see it as an answer to prayer and a blessing.”

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