New Roof and Solar Panels

10 Sept, 2019

In September we are replacing our church roof. It is 3 plus decades old and we have patched the life out of it. It served us well.  The new roof will be installed in the next month and the work will be done during the week and not disrupt our liturgies. The cost of the new roof is $165,000 which we are able to pay from our Deferred Maintenance Savings.  After the new roof is completed, we have partnered with Catholic Energies and agreed on a preliminary project to finance and install a solar PV system, as well as a comprehensive LED retrofit on the school and power conditioner energy efficiency equipment on the church and school.

This 25 year agreement will generate 91,000 kWH of clean solar power, and avoiding usage of a further 251,000 kWh on the school and 77,000 on the Church annually via efficiency measures effectively reducing the Church and Schools carbon footprint by nearly 7,700 metric tons of CO2 over the term of the agreement.

Between the solar energy generation and efficiency savings, we currently estimate the Systems will effectively offset 41% of the 1,033,000 kWH used by the Church and School annually.

Savings to the Church and School over projected utility rates is estimated to be $200,000 over the next 25 years.

We are doing this as a prophetic witness to the Care of our Common Home , our Earth, as asked by Pope Francis in his encyclical “Laudato Si”  to reduce carbon footprint and shift to clean renewable energy.

Rev. Robert C. Cilinski