Solar for Safety and Success

Solar for Safety and Success is aimed at increasing access to solar on Port Arthur commercial buildings, providing job training for Port Arthur residents, and building resilience to power outages in the community.

Click here to read the project report. 

Community Resilience Needs in Port Arthur

The Solar for Safety and Success team gathered opinions on power outages and power solutions like solar in your community. 

Learn New Skills!

Interested in a new energy job? Golden Triangle Empowerment Center trains residents in electrical, roofing, construction, and solar installation skills.

Visit gtec-triangle.org to learn more about job training. 

For questions, call (409) 982-0522 or email info@ gtec-triangle.org.  

Commercial Building Owners: Is Your Building a Good Candidate for Solar?


In designing a system, it is important to maximize cost savings by sizing it to onsite power needs. Improving energy efficiency prior to installing solar can help reduce energy demand, meaning less solar capacity would be needed, reducing solar capital costs and energy bills going forward. Cost savings can be redirected to pay for solar installation costs over time. Sizing solar for maximal cost savings helps ensure the savings from solar ends up paying for itself. Done correctly, this payback occurs soon enough that there is a net positive cashflow well before the end of the life of the solar panels.

Get your building evaluated for onsite power resources!

Contact HARC to have your building evaluated.

Solar installation on a carport in a parking lot.

Commercial Building Owners: Is Solar Affordable for Your Building?

Four building portfolios in Port Arthur were analyzed for their potential for photovoltaic (PV) solar alone or alongside battery storage. Solar alone provides clean energy but no resilience. Solar, battery storage, and a generator could provide resilience, keeping a building's power online during a community-wide outage. All of the buildings had positive net present value for solar-only installations and over 2/3 of buildings analyzed had positive net present values for solar+storage+generator installations. HARC is working with these partners to identify funding mechanisms for possible solar installations.


Generating solar energy onsite can reduce energy costs, as solar generated offsets electricity that would be purchased from the grid. In the Entergy service area, excess solar generated onsite could be sold back to the grid at a price that is lower than the rate customer’s pay for electricity. Because of this price difference, it is most impactful to use electricity onsite rather than plan to return it to the grid, so maximizing this value by sizing a system to your building’s demands is important. However, for any excess power you do generate, you can receive a bill credit that reduces your electricity bill.


There are incentives and financing options available for solar. Find out what options are available for your building at: https://betterbuildingssolutioncenter.energy.gov/financing-navigator/explore

Solar installation on a rooftop next to a parking lot.

Stakeholders and Supporting Partners

Solar for Safety and Success is funded by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory through the Solar Energy Innovation Network Round 3. Project partners and key stakeholders include:

Image credits: Header commercial rooftop solar installation from Nuno Marques, Unsplash;  community photos from CIDA and HARC; Rooftop solar installation from Peteonline22, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons; Commercial solar installation from Roofjockey, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons; Solar carport from Flicker02, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons