Destin’s Aquatic Center bags $60,000 grant for adopting solar energy

With depleting fossil fuels worldwide, solar energy is becoming a sustainable alternative for meeting user’s energy needs. Recently, the Emerald Coast Fitness Foundation (ECFF) took a step towards installing a solar panel array at its Destin’s Aquatic Center, which evidently offered it with a $60,000 grant. Reportedly, All Points North Foundation, an organization that is renowned to promote solar projects by offering grants, awarded this funding to the fitness foundation. Sources claim that energy generated from the Aquatic Center’s solar panels in Destin would fulfill at least 10% of the facility’s energy requirement while saving approximately $4,000 yearly. As far as the question of installation goes, the system is expected to be completed by Q1 of 2020, providing 30 plus years of clean and reliable energy. For the record, Emerald Coast Fitness Foundation is a non-profit organization that handles two aquatic facilities in Okaloosa county, namely the Bernie R. Lefebvre Aquatic Center in Fort Walton Beach and the Aquatic Center in Destin. Over the years, minimizing the facility’s energy consumption has been the foundation’s main aim in order to attain sustained operation. Earlier in 2019, ECFF had furthered this cause by installing a geothermal system at Destin’s Aquatic Center to lower costs to cool & heat the pool and energy use. Currently, the foundation is in the midst of replacing ordinary lightings with environmentally-friendly LED lighting at both its facilities and plans to add more panels to its solar array in Destin’s Aquatic Center over the forthcoming years. Moreover, ECFF has reached out to Pensacola’s SunFarm Energy, a local provider of solar battery and PV power systems that is situated in Northwest Florida, asking it to install a 24.09-kilowatt system including of 66 panels on its locker room building’s roof. Source Credit: https://www.nwfdailynews.com/news/20200209/destin-pool-acquires-solar-panel