At Lakes Country Public Library Building Expansion Committee’s first meeting in 2020, Tom Thielke, Linda McKenna, Linda Denz, Ted Bartels and I created a vision of what we wanted the new library to be. Ambiance? Classy and comfortable. Function? Meet the needs of our patrons, a diverse population representing a wide variety of ethnic, economic, educational and social backgrounds. Best bang for the buck? Use every square foot, be under budget and on time.
If you read Lee Pulaski’s Aug. 15 story about the little library in Lakewood we love, you can see why we stand convinced that we succeeded.
Oh, another important goal: The library would serve as a role model for energy efficiency. We chose Jeff Musson from Rhinelander as our architect, because he promised to take our vision into consideration with every facet of the project. Thanks to a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant sponsored by Sen. Tammy Baldwin, we were able to install solar panels in July to provide free clean energy that will save taxpayers money while helping to save the planet.
As my dearly departed friend Norb Langer, who got me involved with saving the Holt and Balcom Logging Camp in Lakewood, always said, “Celebrate the good stuff.”
On Sept. 17 at 3 p.m., LCPL is doing just that with a special ribbon-cutting ceremony. On hand will be Jordan Kaiser, Northwind Solar, Amherst, who has accepted our invitation to be the third presenter in our speakers series.
This event, which includes self-guided tours, will begin with a brief ceremony to celebrate the library going green. Jordan will then give a formal presentation that summarizes the details of the project. Come see for yourself, as this is a perfect opportunity to ask questions you may have about going solar.
Incidentally, as we were working with Jordan last spring, I was so impressed that I decided to check into residential solar power systems. Jordan’s sidekick, Kyle Galloway, takes care of that part of the business, and Kyle came over to see if our home at Otter Run was a good candidate.
At the time, I was leaning toward a ground mount system like the one Northwind installed at the Town of Riverview. Kyle didn’t recommend going that route. The “sight lines to the sun” were not favorable unless we cut down a lot of healthy trees. If you are a regular reader of my column, you know doing that was absolutely out of the question.
As he checked out the suitability of roof-mounted panels, a huge smile came on Kyle’s face. The pitch and angle to the sun of our steel roof were ideal for solar panels.
Of course, some people told us we were crazy to install solar at our age; we would never live to recoup our investment. Probably, but the system has a 20-year warranty so what we essentially did was pre-pay our power bill for the next two decades — at today’s prices. Now I must ask; have energy rates ever gone down? Not in my lifetime.
One huge plus is solar panels demand no maintenance except annual cleaning. Lumber Jake’s Window Cleaning will happily provide that service for less than what we pay for yearly maintenance on our LP furnace.
We did not purchase a storage battery, but that’s next on the list. Battery technology is evolving quickly as businesses and homeowners worldwide are going green. Experts predict storage batteries of the future will be smaller, hold more energy, and be less expensive. Thus we chose to wait for this add-on.
True, our system has only been in operation for a month, but so far we are generating more power than we are using. How do I know that? I have an app on my phone that tells me how much electricity our 20 panels are producing, keeps a history of their generation, and estimates their positive impact on the planet by showing how many pounds of carbon we are not spewing out by burning fossil fuel and how many trees it would take to clean that polluted air.
As of the end of August, we have “planted” 33 trees and kept 500 kilograms of carbon from being added to the atmosphere. Oh, in case you were wondering, despite wildfire smoke and several cloudy days, our power bill was $19.76, our customer service charge. We also have a $4 credit on our account for extra KWH returned to WPS. The grin on my face when I saw that bill was even bigger than Kyle’s when he saw our roof, but the biggest smile of all was surely on the face of Mother Nature.
Kathleen Marsh is a lifelong educator, writer, and community advocate. She has published eight books, four on the history of Townsend, where she and husband Jon are happily retired on the beautiful Townsend Flowage.