1. Distributed Energy

    Texas Hearing Institute School for Children Welcomes Rooftop Solar Array

    Feb. 24, 2025
    On-site solar energy could save the Texas Hearing Institute about $16,000 in annual event costs. The money savings will allow the Webb school to provide audiology services for another 55 children at no additional cost.
    Image credit Texas Hearing Institute/Facebook
    67bcdd6baabf9ef0c0c80e42 Texas Hearing Institute

    The Melinda Webb School in Houston, a part of the Texas Hearing Institute where children up to 6 years old receive specialized teaching to prepare for elementary classrooms, is now home to a new 150.7-kW rooftop solar array that is designed to cut costs and emissions as well as open services to more hearing-impaired students.

    The project was delivered by Green Mountain Energy’s Sun Club as part of the Texas Hearing Institute’s sustainability initiative. Green Mountain Sun Club contributed a $244,000 grant to install the project.

    The 274 solar panels generating carbon-free distributed energy on-site are anticipated to save the Texas Hearing Institute about $16,000 in annual event costs. The money savings will allow the Webb school to provide audiology services for another 55 children at no additional cost.

    “This generous contribution will not only have a positive environmental impact, but (the Institute) will benefit from decreased energy costs for years to come, allowing those funds to instead be used to help children with hearing loss reach their full potential,” Texas Hearing Institute CEO, Kyle Swift said in a statement.

    The upgrade will also reduce the organization's environmental footprint by 331,179 pounds of carbon dioxide over the lifetime of the array.

    Austin, Texas-based Green Mountain Energy is a renewable energy developer which sells clean electricity products via renewable energy credits. It is owned by wholesale and retail power generator NRG Energy.

    The Sun Club is Green Mountain’s initiative to funding sustainability projects for nonprofits. Over 22 years the Sun Club has donated more than $14 million to 164 projects across multiple states.

    The Texas Hearing Institute was founded in 1947 as the Center for Hearing and Speech. It serves students with hearing loss from infancy to 21 years old, and the Melinda Webb School is its private education wing which helps prepare children for eventually joining elementary classes in other private and public schools.

     

    About the Author

    EnergyTech Staff

    Rod Walton is senior editor for EnergyTech.com. He has spent 14 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist.

    Walton formerly was energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World. Later, he spent six years covering the electricity power sector for Pennwell and Clarion Events. He joined Endeavor and EnergyTech in November 2021.

    He can be reached at [email protected]. 

    EnergyTech is focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids.

    Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.

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