Western Gateway Park in Penn Valley has gone solar. The chair of the Park District Board of Directors, Nancy Peirce, says, with electricity available at several sites, it was a natural choice to install a solar array. She says the original idea was install it, as a covered parking area, since it could cover eight spaces. But she says using it as part of rentable picnic space made more sense…

Peirce says the monthly electricity bill for Western Gateway Park was running about one-thousand dollars. She says they are now expecting to see a total savings of 175-thousand dollars over 25 years, with the savings to do many other things for users…

Peirce says most of the extra revenue will be used more for keeping up with maintenance costs better. She says the array blends in so well with the park that there has been little comment from the public.