Coastside State Parks Association recently provided over $130,000 to Año Nuevo State Park enabling the installation of one of the first solar systems with backup batteries in California state parks. 

The system is up and running and will provide renewable, solar energy and battery back-up to the Año Nuevo State Park office, Marine Education Center, well and water system, Horse Barn, and the tool shed. “Going solar” will offset the park's carbon footprint and provide a power source to the park during the frequent and sometimes lengthy power outages it experiences throughout the year. This will happen during winter storms at the peak of visitation for the elephant seal breeding season (with hopes that this will resume soon following the concerning avian flu disruption) as well as during planned power outages in the summer when high winds threaten to bring down electric wires at the height of fire season. As one of the most visited and cherished parks in California, we felt a responsibility to help keep the lights on for both visitor services and safety reasons.

With the newly installed system, not only will the lights stay on, the rangers’ radios charge, the Marine Education Center and park store remain open and functional, but also the water system will continue to function and the toilets will flush. Staff will no longer need to rapidly close off access to all water (flush toilets, sinks, water fountains, etc.) and make chemical toilets available instead and then reopen them all. The system is ground mounted in a sunny location out of view of the public and the park is known for having more sunshine than much of the San Mateo coast.

Since the system became active, PGE power has already gone off multiple times including in December and for a couple of days in February during stormy weather at the height of visitation. The batteries were programmed to full back up and everything that was backed up continued to function while the power was out. 

The solar panels themselves are projected to have a 30 year life span.  Given the size and design of the system, the payback period is estimated at 13.5 years. The system has already resulted in cutting the PGE bills for Año Nuevo by approximately $500-700 per month and that will likely increase as summer approaches. Check out the chart above. These savings will be realized by State Parks at a time when they are struggling to fund essential operations.  

We are proud to be part of California State Parks’ efforts to mitigate climate change and provide a good example to visitors and we will continue to explore additional opportunities for solar panels in the 15 parks we support. https://www.parks.ca.gov/pages/24872/files/brochure-climatechange.pdf

Thanks to all our donors for their critical role in making this project a reality.

– Pam Koch​, Coastside State Parks Association Board Member