(Photo: Satellite imagery of the Fountaingrove Club via Google Maps.)Devastated last year by one of California’s worst wildfires, a golf and athletic club has completed the installation of a new 161-kilowatt solar energy system for its rebuilt facilities. The Fountaingrove Club in Sonoma County expects the solar power system will pay for itself within five or six years, and last for 30.
The Tubbs Fire tore through Santa Rosa in October 2017, pushed downhill by winds exceeding 50 miles per hour, the Press Democrat reported. It killed around two dozen people, and burned more than 5,200 homes and structures — the most destructive in the state’s history.
Among the losses were Fountaingrove Club’s clubhouse and maintenance facilities, including all the maintenance vehicles, as well as a 3,600 square-foot solar pool heating system that Northern California solar energy provider SolarCraft had installed in 2005. More than 200 employees and members total lost their homes to the blaze.
A bin full of towels that caught fire under an exterior sprinkler likely helped save the athletic club, the North Bay Business Journal reported in January. Nobody was inside at the time, the journal’s James Dunn wrote. “The club offered its facilities as a ‘comfort zone’ for anyone who lived in the Fountaingrove area to clean up as they dug through ashes and rubble, even non-members.”
“We have one building left, and it’s going to be solar powered,” Ron Banaszak, Fountaingrove general manager, said.
SolarCraft installed the new system, which consists of 446 solar panels that will produce 230,940 kWh annually, enough to offset nearly 70% of the athletic club’s annual electricity usage from PG&E, the solar energy provider says. During its lifetime, the solar power system is also expected to eliminate more than 189 tons of carbon dioxide generated by the club’s operations every year.
Part of the PV system is mounted on the remaining athletic club building and part on a custom engineered solar shade structure that serves as a carport and EV charging station for club and visitor vehicles, according to SolarCraft.
The Fountaingrove Club intends to rebuild the pool’s solar-powered water heating system as part of their sustainable long-range strategic plan, the solar power provider says.
