Noble Hotel Goes Solar

  Victoria Fregoso reports, vfregoso@k2tv.com

 A building in Lander's historic downtown is getting an upgrade. Over 100 solar panels were installed on the roof of the Noble Hotel.




 The Noble Hotel that sits on Lander's Main Street is home to dorm rooms for the National Outdoor Leadership School, but it also holds 108 solar panels, right on it's roof top.
 
"Our classroom is the wilderness," said Gary Cukjati, Director of NOLS Rocky Mountain. "We believe it's important to support renewable energy. That it helps preserve that classroom."

NOLS received a grant through Rocky Mountain Power's Blue Sky Renewable Energy Program.

"There is a tremendous need to educate the public on the various sources of electric energy and especially to educate them with respect to utilizing renewable resources," said Larry Elcock of Rocky Mountain Power.

Solar panels are slowly becoming more common in the state of Wyoming. That's because more people have learned the panels are a trusted source of energy.

"Certainly if we look at other areas of the country or other areas of the world, we see solar everywhere," said Scott Kane, a co-owner of Creative Energies. "You can't look around with out seeing solar on roof tops. Wyoming isn't quite there yet, but we're moving in the right direction."

Installing these panels brings NOLS one step closer to reducing their carbon footprint by 30% by the year 2020.

"One of our hopes as an education insitution is that we will inspire other people to install panels such as this. But also just to think of the concept of reducing energy consumption," said Cukjati.

And just so you have an idea, these solar panels produce 230-watts of energy continuously, which is the same amount of energy a fast peddling cyclist would produce.
But the downside is, a cyclist would have to show up day after day, year after year to produce the same amount of energy as a solar panel.

"If I had to pick one or the other, I think I would hire a solar panel, rather than a cyclist," says Kane.