Green Marines: Camp Lejeune Buys Into Solar Power

[Ed Barrow]

On the Camp Lejeune Marine Corps base in North Carolina, large, reflective rectangles line the rooftops of some of the homes. But they're not some high-tech military gadget or even a satellite dish to get the latest TV channels: They're solar panels for heating water. So many of these panels have gone up in one neighborhood that the community is quickly becoming the largest in the continental U.S. to heat water with solar energy.

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Michael Shore, the president of FLS Energy — the company behind the solar panels — says they act like a greenhouse: They heat a fluid that runs down pipes inside the house and transfer the heat into a 40-gallon water tank with temperatures reaching 180 degrees. Shore says solar hot water is one of the most cost-effective ways to generate energy.

"We have this myth in this country that renewable energy's expensive," Shore says. "And here, Camp Lejeune and the house company are saving money through solar , so I think we are really in the midst of a shift in how our nation gets its energy."

Shore says energy from the sun can heat three-quarters of the water used in a typical household. But Marines living on base don't pay utility bills. So who's saving money? Camp Lejeune, sort of. FLS buys all of the solar panels and equipment and sells the hot water to the company that runs Camp Lejeune's on-base housing. FLS has done this before with populations of individuals who don't have to foot the water bill themselves. It has tacked solar panels on top of hotels, college dorms, prisons — places that use a lot of hot water.

"So the military was the next, and maybe the best, frontier just because there is so much hot water that's used on a base," Shore says.


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