For a second year, Greener Glenview and Go Green Northbrook partnered to offer the Glenbrook Solar Tour, offering a learning opportunity for the community to see firsthand how solar technology is being used locally.
The Glenbrook Solar Tour 2023 on Sept. 30 was part of the statewide Solar Tour 2023 sponsored annually by the Illinois Solar Energy and Storage Association (ISEA).
The free annual tour is designed to educate people about sustainable energy choices they can make to cut their utility bills and reduce carbon emissions.
This year’s Glenbrook Solar Tour on a Saturday had 14 tour hosts in Glenview with six in Northbrook.
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For Glenview, “We’re happy to have almost double the hosts this year,” said Mary Munday of Glenview, co-founder of Greener Glenview with Sheri Latash, also of Glenview.
Munday and Latash have been Glenview residents for 30 plus years.
“Permit requests for solar installation are growing in Glenview, too, and we think this shows that people see solar as a real win-win,” Munday said.
“It saves them money on electric bills, and it also helps clean up our electric grid so that all those electric cars and mowers out there are running on renewable energy rather than gas,” Munday also said.
Bernadette Knight, solar tour coordinator for Go Green Northbrook, said that over the past three years while coordinating the Northbrook end of the solar tour, “I’ve spoken to dozens of Northbrook homeowners with solar installations.
“Every single one was thrilled with their decision,” Knight said. “It’s planet friendly and a great decision financially.”
In Glenview, the owners of solar-powered homes plus Saints Peter and Paul Greek Orthodox Church (1401 Wagner Road) showcased their solar panel installations that Saturday. Bright signage along properties guided and helped to encourage people to stop to learn more.
Sheri Latash (Greener Glenview co-founder), George Nassos of Glenview and Rev. Fr. Richard Demetrius Andrews of Saints Peter and Paul Greek Orthodox Church were on hand at the church to greet tour visitors at noon.
Latash said buildings can be retrofitted, “to make them more efficient or you can get them off natural gas so you’ll have less of those greenhouse gas emissions.
“Having solar works to that goal.”
Latash reported feeling, “thrilled,” that Saints Peter and Paul Greek Orthodox Church is setting an example by using solar energy.
“I’m thrilled that they’re setting a standard,” Latash said. “There are a number of large buildings in Glenview that could be putting panels on the roof and doing the same thing, so we hope they’ll be a role model.”
Saints Peter and Paul Greek Orthodox Church installed its solar panels this past summer on the community center and gymnasium at a cost of $225,000, funded by donation money to a LLC.
With a tax credit, rebates and certificates, the solar installation will return a low to no cost energy opportunity to the church after several years with a three decade window of benefits post installation.
With the church’s recent solar installation, 2023 was the first year Saints Peter and Paul Greek Orthodox Church took part in the solar tour.
Rev. Andrews said, “It’s always good when we’re interacting with the community,” so that, “people know that we’re partnering with the community and doing our part to help save energy.”
The church’s solar inventory has 283 panels (not on the dome sanctuary building facing Lake Avenue). The system has net-metering which reverses the electrical meter if the panels generate more electricity than the church consumes.
Nassos said, “We need as much renewable energy, solar or wind, as possible to reduce the carbon emissions.
“The more we produce from solar or wind, the less we are going to be emitting carbon and right now, we’re on track to really have major problems with climate change,” Nassos said.
“Some people think it’s not climate change, it’s climate crisis,” Nassos added. “Because we’re really going in the wrong direction.”
Learn more about the Solar Tour at https://www.illinoissolar.org/Illinois-Solar-Tour.
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Karie Angell Luc is a freelancer for Pioneer Press.