With 60 photovoltaic panels on the roof, Andrew McLeod’s association holds the title for largest solar array in New Brunswick.
And it’s a distinction he can’t wait to lose.
“It’s gonna happen, we’re going to lose that title, there is no doubt about it,” says McLeod, CEO of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of New Brunswick (APEGNB), one recent sunny day in May.
“And that’s our goal — for us to be beat, for someone else to come up bigger and better.”
After all, the largest body of engineering professionals in the province didn’t install the solar array to be Number One, they did it to show people that solar power is already a viable alternative, right here in New Brunswick.
The association installed 60 panels to the roof of its building at the bottom of Hanwell Road in Fredericton in June 2015.
The array was unveiled at an event attended by executives from NB Power, the then Minister of the Environment and Minister of Natural Resources, and the Conservation Council’s Lois Corbett, among others.
Two years later, McLeod and his association hail the initiative as a great success.
Since the switch was flipped on, the solar array has generated more than 33,000 KwH of clean energy. McLeod estimates the panels generate roughly 30 per cent of the building’s electricity needs.
While they see a credit on their power bill every month for the energy they’ve generated, they don’t know exactly how much money they’re saving thanks to the panels. McLeod says the association is currently working with NB Power on an improved monitoring system to give them that hard data.
“But we are definitely seeing a reduced power bill, there is no doubt about it. We’re not using our heat pumps as much as we were in the past, and our electric baseboard backup is not going on nearly as much as it used to. There is a good overall reduction in our (grid) power usage.”
Due to the angle of the panels, they generate the most energy during the spring months of March, April and May. Their best day for generation so far happened in May, at 115 KwH.
Anyone can see how much clean energy the panels are generating in real time at the panels’ Enphase Monitoring website. It’s a link that gets a lot of hits from McLeod’s office.
“I check it daily,” he says. “And we’ve had people tell us that they were following the Enphase monitoring online before deciding to go down the solar road themselves.”
And that speaks perfectly to APEGNB’s broader goal for the panels.
“We want to be a leader and early adopter of solar energy in New Brunswick. With more than 4,000 practising engineers, we wanted to show them that this is a viable energy alternative, so if they can get into using it with their clients, that’s a good thing. And we wanted people to be able to come in off the street, ask questions about it, and we’d be able to help them.” McLeod says.
“From that standpoint, I think we’ve been very successful.”
McLeod estimates that at least one person per month has come to inquire about the array in the two years it’s been operating.
“Interest in solar seems to have grown even since we did our project,” he says. “A lot of municipalities are looking at it as a maintenance-free and very easy way to generate electricity. Fredericton has been in to see (the array), New Maryland has been in to see it, so we’re glad to be doing our part to help generate that interest.”