On the gently sloping hill above the Four Seasons YMCA on an early spring day, an excited crowd of community members, community advocates and solar professionals and enthusiasts wandered through rows of solar panels as the afternoon sun warmed the March air and charged the array. The crowd had gathered  in Tazewell, Virginia, for a special ribbon-cutting ceremony hosted by the regional Solar Workgroup of Southwest Virginia and solar developer Secure Solar Futures to celebrate the newly installed solar panel array. 

Local community members, leaders and representatives from the solar company Secure Solar Futures, regional nonprofits Appalachian Voices and Appalachian Sustainable Development, and other community groups were on hand to get a look at the new array located just beside YMCA’s community garden. The event also included a catered dinner from Kathy’s Custom Catering.  

The event featured several guest speakers, including Shawn Durham, the executive director of the Tazewell YMCA, Matthew McFadden and Anthony Smith of Secure Solar Futures, and David Gabbert, groundwork garden supervisor at Appalachian Sustainable Development. 

Durham explained that ballooning energy costs have become a growing concern for the large YMCA facility, especially as Tazewell’s population has seen a downward trajectory in recent years. This population decline has led to declining memberships and revenue for the YMCA, which has strained their budget. Currently, the facility spends over $10,000 per month on electricity, in addition to several thousand dollars monthly on propane. 

Durham explained that energy costs are the facility’s biggest expense. “It shouldn’t be that way,” he says, “Your payroll should be your biggest, but it’s not. And because that hinders us so much, we have to ask a lot of people on our staff to do more than one thing, and we run a bare bones crew, and we’ve cut about every cost that we can cut.”  

The power company serving the area has raised rates by more than 46% in the past few years. But thanks to the Four Seasons YMCA’s new solar agreement with Secure Solar Futures, Durham expects to see significant savings on the campus’s power bill.

“Secure Solar Futures actually owns that array,” he says. “We’re gonna purchase our electricity from them at a lot cheaper rate than what the power company charges.”

Join us for the first ever Southwest Virginia Solar Summit

Would you like to learn more about Southwest Virginia’s growing solar industry? Then please join us for the Southwest Virginia Solar Summit on May 21 at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise!

Register for the SWVA Solar Summit

How much will they be able to save per year? Based on current projections, this arrangement will save the YMCA’s facility up to $40,000 a year, or between $3,000 to $4,000 per month on their power bill. The new solar array is expected to cover 97% of the annual energy needs of the Four Seasons YMCA campus, which includes a full gym, an indoor track, indoor basketball courts and an indoor pool. 

In addition to the projected energy savings, the project also created several construction jobs during the installation phase. Got Electric, LLC, based in Virginia and Maryland, was responsible for the construction of the new array. Caleb Schabach of Got Electric served as project manager.  

“We had a crew of maybe five to six guys on site most days, and that would be from the start of the project through the end of the project, which would be, in this case, I think it was about three or four months,” Schabach says. The new array has a capacity of about 400 kilowatts of electricity, enough to power approximately 50 homes. 

The new solar installation was made possible in part due to the federal energy tax incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act. The project qualifies for both the investment tax credit and a 10% energy communities bonus credit because it is located in a community affected by the decline of the coal industry. Because Secure Solar Futures owns the array, they receive the tax credits and are able to pass the savings on to the YMCA. The new installation is helping the YMCA save tens of thousands of dollars a year that will go back into the services it provides the community. Unfortunately, some members of Congress are currently trying to repeal these tax credits as part of a larger effort to provide tax cuts for the wealthiest members of society. Abandoning these tax credits would put Southwest Virginia at risk of losing vital opportunities for its economic future. 

Matthew McFadden, associate director of business development for Secure Solar Futures, explained that the ribbon cutting marked the capstone of the project, representing over five years of work and planning. The new solar array is the first commercial solar project in Tazewell County, and he hopes that this project and others like it will result in a greater awareness of solar energy’s potential as a creator of employment opportunities for Southwest Virginia residents.  

Because of recent freezes in federal funding, McFadden is concerned about the future of similar projects.

“There was a big project that was going to give a prize to a specific school district we’re working with,” he says “That project got canceled because of this federal funding freeze, and it could have provided quite a bit of opportunity for that school to have some resiliency and some additional funds to explore other alternative, green forms of energy. But now the conversations have been stopped, and I wish that wasn’t the case.”

But as the solar panels on the hillside behind the Four Seasons YMCA keep the pool comfortable and the lights on, lowering costs for this key community gathering place, they may also help spark similar projects in the area.