Fort Worth, whose city leaders opened their arms widely to the natural gas industry, isn’t exactly a shining example when it comes to solar energy.
Environment Texas released a report yesterday that ranked major Texas cities for solar usage, and Fort Worth was an afterthought.
“Austin and San Antonio are leading Texas in solar energy because they have adopted strong policies that encourage solar power on residences and businesses, and in utility-scale installations,” the report said.
The municipally owned utilities in those two cities have “supported the installation of four times more solar photovoltaic capacity than the rest of Texas combined or 85 percent of the state total,” the report said.
In other words, other Texas cities aren’t doing much.
Fort Worth ranked seventh.
Woo … uh … hoo?
It’s even worse in the suburbs. Benbrook added a restriction to the zoning laws that doubled the set back required for solar system from 5 feet to 10 feet from your property line. With this simple change the zoning board effectively reduced the number of homes that could install a ground mounted solar array by 70%! When I questioned the zoning board for their reason for this arbitrary change they had no response. No one knew how or why the new restriction was inserted into the code. To me it smells like a political move to throw up roadblocks to protect the Oil and Gas big money. In spite of the obstacles I still managed to install my solar array and my total electric bill for 2012 was less than $200. Using SmartMeterTexas.com I was able to cut my electric bill by 90%. This year I think I will actually have a zero electric bill while saving over 7 tons of CO2 emissions.
@BluesGuy — Give me a call if you can, I’d like to talk to you about this.
jeff, 817-321-9709
My company is one of the few in Fort Worth that does Sustainable Construction. From Rainwater Catchment systems to Solar Panel Systems. check us out!!!