The St. Mary and St. Moses Abbey, a monastery of the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate – Diocese of the Southern United States, installed a 476 KW solar system at its Sandia, TX location in 2020. SHINE Partners developed the project with its local installation partner Lighthouse Solar. SHINE worked with members of the Diocese to structure a power purchase agreement as the financing tool.
The Abbey was able to utilize the AEP Texas solar rebate program to reduce the capital costs of the system and therefore the related cost of electricity to the Abbey.
The expected 30-year energy production for the system is 19.8 Gigawatt hours, which has the environmental benefit of saving approximately 15.4 million pounds of coal burned to generate the same amount of electricity.
The ground-mounted system is located in the AEP Texas utility territory, and the Abbey is expected to save approximately 46% on the energy produced by the project.
The installed solar array with annual energy generation of 709.9 MWh is expected to produce up to 100% of the Abbey’s electricity, and the Abbey will consider adding more solar panels to the site as its future energy needs grow.
