Environmental Project # 1
We are very keen to support projects which embrace environmental awareness techniques and clean, renewable energy sources. Some examples would be: earthship projects, sustainable architecture, solar energy and other eco-friendly ideas which use natural and up-cycled materials.
Below are some photos from an earth ship project that we financed which was recently completed. Our loan allowed the owner to build this beautiful sustainable home which is now available for rent on AirBNB. If you are heading to Big Sky, Montana and would like to stay at this home, here is the link to the page on AirBNB:
Earthship Sustainable Home Experience in Big Sky
Environmental Project # 2
Another project recently completed was the installation of a 10 mw Photovoltaic solar panel energy collection system used to lower the energy bills of a home in Montana. These panels were mounted on a tracking system, which uses light sensors to continually move to an optimum position. With the efficiencies gained, the project only uses 24 panels compared to 48 needed for a static rooftop system. The energy collected is sent through an inverter to the local power grid utilizing a Net Metering program.
This location receives many bright sunny days which increase the effectiveness of PV panels in Winter. We also installed 'bifacial' solar panels which can receive light energy from both sides. Interestingly, due to the suns reflection off of the snow, we are finding these panels actually produce more energy, on a per-hour basis, in Winter than during the Summer months. However, with Summer daylight hours almost twice as long, much more energy production is done between April and September.
The entire system is easily monitored remotely and has happily outperformed expectations.
