Location
Nashville, TN
Project Size
4,200kW
Equipment Installed
Astronergy and Boviet solar panels & SolarEdge and Delta inverters
Mounting Type
Ballasted Ground Mount on Landfill + Flush Roof Mount + Fixed Tilt Ground Mount
“LightWave Solar has been very good to work with, and we’ve had a good experience with everyone we’ve met.” – John Barnett, Project Manager and Engineer at Metro Water Services
Helping Nashville Become More Sustainable
If you live or work in Nashville, your drinking water just got more sustainable. This is because Metro Water Services, Nashville’s primary water provider, has added (or will soon add) a total of 4 megawatts (MW) of solar power at three of their treatment plants. Metro Water is reducing their environmental impact and helping Metro Nashville meet its goal of using 100% renewable energy to power the city’s infrastructure.
Metro Water’s First Net Zero Energy Building
In 2021, LightWave Solar installed a 211 kilowatt (kW) rooftop solar energy system for Metro Water Services. This solar powered system was made for their new net-zero energy building, which houses their central admin & maintenance departments. With their new solar energy system in place, the building is able to generate more energy than it uses over the course of the year. The excess solar energy flows to the nearby central wastewater treatment plant.
Continuing to Increase Renewable Energy
In 2022, LightWave Solar commissioned a solar energy system for the central wastewater treatment plant — a 437 kW ground-mounted array. By spring of 2023, LightWave will have installed 4 solar energy projects at three different plants, totaling over 4,200 kilowatts of solar power.
“Solar energy is a big initiative for us,” said John Barnett, project manager and engineer at Metro Water. “We’re committed to implementing solar as a way to reduce carbon emissions and other types of pollution that come along with using conventional grid power,” he said. “We’re also helping Nashville meet the bill passed in 2019 that requires Metro Nashville to reach 100% renewable energy by 2041,” he added.
Metro Water’s Solar Energy Plan
Sustainability consulting firm, Wilmot, Inc., has helped Metro Water put their energy reduction and solar generation plan into action. The solar energy projects include a total of 9,718 solar panels, which will generate about 6,070 megawatt-hours annually – that’s enough electricity to power around 550 homes each year. The carbon dioxide savings these projects provide are equal to removing 900 gasoline powered cars off the road every year — or, planting over 5,000 acres of trees.
The next solar projects LightWave Solar will install at Metro Water Services include a 950kW solar energy system at Whites Creek wastewater treatment plant, and a 2.6MW solar energy system at Omohundro water treatment plant. Altogether, Metro Water’s solar energy generation will cover about 5% of their total electricity usage.
“LightWave Solar has been very good to work with, and we’ve had a good experience with everyone we’ve met,” Barnett said. “We plan to build more solar powered systems in the future because these investments benefit ratepayers and the community for the long term,” he added. To see how the solar energy system for Metro Water’s central wastewater treatment plant is performing, visit their monitoring site here.
