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Balfour Beatty Communities, as managing member of military housing projects located at Fort Detrick and Fort Carson, and SolarCity have completed the installation of more than 18,000 solar panels at Army family housing. The solar panels are installed on multi-family housing, community centers and maintenance facilities at Fort Detrick, Maryland and Fort Carson, Colorado, to provide power to approximately 1,200 housing units across the two bases.
SolarCity designed, built and will maintain the solar power systems, and the military housing project companies (jointly owned by the Army and Balfour Beatty Communities) purchase the power they produce at a discount to local utility rates to generate savings. The installations total more than 4.7MW of solar power generation capacity—Fort Carson is the larger of the projects with a combined 3MW of capacity and the Fort Detrick installations are at 1.7MW.
"This partnership is yet another example of Fort Carson's work to increase our nation's security through energy efficiency and home-grown clean energy solutions," said U.S. Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado. "It will support service members and their families while benefiting Colorado's economy and environment."
"All Marylanders are subject to more frequent and deadly heat waves and storms and 70 percent live in coastal areas, so I take very seriously the threats from climate change, as we all should," said U.S. Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, a senior member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "The good news is that by reducing our carbon pollution, we can slow, stop and even reverse these risks, while creating new jobs and increasing America's energy security. SolarCity's investment in Ft. Detrick will move us closer to our national clean energy goals. It is the type of mutually beneficial private investment that moves us in the right direction, and I applaud it."
"This new solar panel installation at Fort Detrick is exactly what our country needs. Having renewable, off-the-grid electricity generation is strategically important at our military bases and preventing climate change is in the best interests of our national security," said Congressman John K. Delaney of Maryland. "This gets us one step closer to the national goal of 50x30 - 50% clean and carbon free electricity by 2030 - that Senator Cardin and I have been working on together in Congress. I want to congratulate SolarCity for their SolarStrong initiative that plans on bringing solar power to more than 120,000 military homes in the U.S. This just goes to show that investments in clean energy are good for our economy, good for our national security, and good for the environment."
"We are very pleased to continue the expansion of our solar energy program for military housing," said Chris Williams, president of Balfour Beatty Communities. "Launched at Fort Bliss in 2012, our innovative collaboration with SolarCity is now enabling the delivery of cleaner, less expensive energy to thousands of military families across the country."
The installations are part of SolarCity's SolarStrong project, the largest residential solar initiative in American history, which now provides power across 37 military installations.
(Photo Source: SolarCity’s Facebook page)