Solar Array Helps Choptank Electric Cooperative Regional Service Center Achieve LEED Silver Certification
The Choptank Electric Cooperative (CEC) has a history of being on the leading edge of electrical developments in Maryland. Formed in 1938 (under its original name, Choptank Cooperative), the cooperative was designed to electrify rural Maryland — a revolutionary idea then.
Since that time, it has continued its leadership in electricity distribution to serve its 53,000 member/owners in the most effective way possible, all the while remaining sensitive to its place near the center of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.
While the watershed was a dumping ground for heavy industry in the past, it has increasingly become cleaner in recent years, thanks to the dedicated efforts of activists and organizations like CEC.
So when they decided to build a new Regional Service Center, which hosts operations serving members on Maryland’s lower Eastern Shore, and make it a LEED Silver Certified building, they had to choose an energy source that wouldn’t interfere with that goal.
Leave No Land Unused
Trying to earn LEED certification is not a project for the faint-hearted. It’s an often arduous process that can take years. But once a building achieves LEED certification, it reaches an exalted status within the environmental community.
Standard Solar’s expert team of developers and engineers reviewed the unused land the CEC wanted to use for the site and recommended a 503-kilowatt, 1,596 panel system that could produce 706 megawatt hours per year. Along with other energy efficiency measures, the array helped CEC’s Regional Service Center achieve the LEED certification it desired.
The array was widely praised by the board and its chairman.
