By Sam Richards

Staff writer

Monday, November 18 (10:00 a.m.): A recent Tuesday morning saw a small squadron of trucks and other construction equipment under the new Gateway solar panel canopy structures make the short move a few hundred feet to the south.

Welcome to Phase II of the GRF solar canopy project, in which almost all of the main Gateway parking lot will be covered with canopies holding the solar panels themselves. Phase I of the project, the north half of the main Gateway lot, officially finished up on Nov. 5, said Project Manager Fred Ponce. The north part of the parking lot was expected to be fully open for parking the following day, he added.

The work to install the first group of canopies started Oct. 7 and took about a month to complete. That part of the parking lot was closed to drivers, forcing them to concentrate in the southern half of the big lot.

Now, the south half of the Gateway lot will close.

The work on the south end of the parking lot is expected to take a bit longer, Ponce said, likely finishing in mid-January. There are three holidays between now and mid-January, he noted, and rain – if it comes – would probably cause some additional delay, he said.

The project could save Rossmoor as much as $11.3 million in electricity costs for GRF Trust structures (clubhouses, Event Center, MOD, other GRF facilities) over 25 years, Ponce said, allowing GRF to sidestep buying power from an outside utility.

The GRF solar project also will include rooftop panels on the Event Center and not-yetbuilt pickleball facility, adjacent to the Event Center. There isn’t even a date for beginning of construction of the pickleball building, so there’s no date for the start of that solar panel work, Ponce said. City permits for that project are still pending, in any event, he added.

The Gateway panels, however, could begin producing power almost immediately, Ponce said – if the necessary “switch gears” needed to make that happen arrive in a timely way. “There have been production delays, and that could hold things up,” said Ponce, adding that other solar projects have suffered delays because of the production holdups.

The solar panels are being installed at no cost to GRF under a 25-year Power Purchase Agreement with F& M Bank. The bank will initially own the solar panel infrastructure, and the power they generate.

GRF General Manager Jeff Matheson said F& M will take advantage of tax incentives that amount to 30% of the cost of building the solar panel infrastructure and will pass along those savings to GRF in the form of correspondingly cheaper power rates, Matheson said.

Under the agreement with F& M, GRF can buy the Gateway solar power infrastructure for $575,000 10 years after construction is finished.