By ALLISON TRUNKEY
atrunkey@soundpublishing.com

KINGSTON — Meters tracking electricity used — and generated — by Kingston’s new Village Green Community Center were installed July 18.

From proposal to completion, the solar project took only a few months. They are the icing on the cake of the new center.

Now that they’ve been installed and connected to Puget Sound Energy’s meters, they’ve begun generating solar energy and contributing to the power grid. On a day like we’ve seen recently, where the sun radiates down with relentless energy, the panels are producing in excess. That excess flows back into the grid, providing electrical power for the community.

“Any little bit helps,” Alan Chessman said on July 27, nine days after the meters began tracking electricity generated by the community center’s rooftop panels.

Chessman led the effort to have the solar panels installed. Recently retired, he’s spent the past several months championing the project.

Along with 24 other local residents, Chessman formed Kitsap Community Solar, an LLC that funded the solar panels. They raised as much as $241,000, according to Chessman, and paid the project’s full costs, including overhead and insurance.

It was a collaborative, community effort that was a reflection of the community center itself. The Village Green Foundation and various community partners raised $8 million to build the community center, which also houses a branch library and a Boys and Girls Club.

The state contributed $1.6 million toward construction of the community center.

“The only community tax dollars that went into the project were paying the attorney fees,” said Bobbie Moore, a Village Green Metropolitan Park District commissioner.

From the beginning, organizers wanted to incorporate solar into plans for the community center, but solar was taken out of the plans because of the cost.

But the location — southern facing and devoid of trees that would obstruct the sun’s rays — could not be passed up.

That’s where Chessman came in. And now that they’ve completed the job, he’s ecstatic.

“It’s so neat,” he said, “that we can have solar for a building at the heart of the community.”

Mary Gleysteen, a Kitsap Community Solar member and self-proclaimed cheerleader for solar, said July 27, “This building is going to serve the community for years and years, and we might as well do it right and give the community a strong example.”

The center’s panels are rated at 75,000 kilowatts. For scale, Chessman says his house’s solar energy system is rated at 4 kilowatts and takes care of his family’s entire energy consumption for the year.

According to Daniel Johnson, executive director of the Village Green Foundation, the solar panels are currently producing more energy than the building is using.

It took two weeks to install the delicate glass panels, and not all of that time was labor-intensive – they had to wait for PSE to replace the meters that only read electricity consumption. The new ones go both directions, tracking if energy is channeling completely into the building or back out into the grid.

In the past, the community center has spent about $12,000 a month on electricity. Chessman and Moore expect the energy generated by the community center’s panels will cover half of that.

During the summer, Chessman said he hopes the panels will produce all of the energy the building requires, and maybe half to two-thirds in the winter.

“I think [solar power] is the wave of the future,” Chessman said with a smile, “and maybe this will help shift the tides.”