Donations To Support Solar Installment
Could you imagine sleeping in a room that reaches 90°F heat?
During the first week in July this summer, a group of us connected to First Presbyterian in Chattanooga went on a short-term mission trip to Acapulco. We were hosted by Casa Hogar, a children’s home that has been serving displaced and orphaned children in Acapulco for over 50 years.
For anyone who has ever been to Acapulco, one of the first impressions is that it’s hot. While most of us were born-and-bred Southerners who thought we were used to humidity, we soon found ourselves hurrying to our bunk rooms each afternoon for our siesta hour when we could briefly turn on our wall-mounted air conditioner. If we hadn’t been able to sleep with our AC on at night, it would have been a much less enjoyable and much more challenging trip.
However, there is a group at Casa Hogar that doesn’t have air conditioning: the kids. As we discussed this with Angie, the head of outreach at Casa Hogar and our de facto guide for the week, she commented how the kids don’t sleep well and that many of them suffer from heat-related rashes. Unfortunately, air conditioning for the kids was out of the question given the expense: electricity is one of the largest on-going costs of running Casa Hogar.
Given the heat and the sun, a few of us started to wonder if solar power could be an option to defray the cost of electricity and perhaps provide the kids with air conditioning in their room.
Yearly Savings
Bringing Solar Energy To Casa Hogar
The Project Proposal
For a total cost of $18,000, a 10kW system could be installed for Casa Hogar. It is calculated that this would reduce the per month cost of electricity by $360, which is about half the cost of their total power bill. It is anticipated that a portion of those savings could help fund air conditioning for the kids’ rooms.
At these rates, this project is estimated to pay for itself in nominal terms in as little as 4 years. The panels themselves are insured for 25years, and while there’s a possibility that the panels would produce electricity for much longer, we understand 30 years to be an industry-standard approximation.