Sun Day at the Park
By Berit Mason
Local civic leaders and San Antonio residents supporting solar power gathered on Sunday for “Sun Day,” at the Alamo Colleges District ACCESS Welcome Center on North Alamo St.
Sun Day promotes clean renewable solar and wind powers.
It was held September 21 on the cusp of the autumnal equinox, in the blazing heat of our powerful Texas sun.
CEO of CPS Energy Rudy Garza was an event panelist.
Garza says CPS Energy, the largest municipally-owned electric and natural gas utility in the country, is fully committed to helping our community adopt renewable energy.
“Our generation plan has us moving away from coal units, converting one of them to natural gas. We’re adding solar, wind, batteries, and all of the other resources, and we are interested in ‘small modular nuclear’ down the road. For us, this includes utility-scale solar. We buy 50-150 megawatts at a time, and then all of the rooftop solar, plus we have thousands of rooftop installations for residential and commercial across the community. We're always thinking ahead,” he says, making the right investments to support the grid.
Spending a summer in Athens, Greece, in 2005, most of their residential buildings had rooftop solar panels. Returning to San Antonio was a stark contrast, where our equally sunny city seemed to ignore the Texas sunshine pouring down.
But in 2022, the Environment Texas Research & Policy Center ranked San Antonio 5th in the nation in total installed solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity.
CPS Energy reports that about 28% of ERCOT grid power is now solar. They get about 100 megawatts a year in additional capacity from customer-owned solar and battery systems. When a homeowner with solar panels collects more solar power than they need, they sell it back to the utility.
Former San Antonio mayor Ron Nirenberg, also a Sun Day guest speaker, says the winds of change have been blowing backwards, beginning when President Trump pulled the U.S. from the Paris Agreement in 2017.
“It certainly faces headwinds, which are almost entirely political because our current state and federal government are oriented towards disincentivizing very logical and more economic renewable energy sources. But in terms of where the public is, they are on the side of their pocketbooks and reliability, and those point in the favor of renewable energy.”
Currently a professor at Trinity University, Nirenberg says during his tenure that the San Antonio citizenry demonstrated an advanced point of view regarding energy issues.
“It has always been the case that we have preferred more environmentally sound policies and planning and resources.”
Now that renewable energy is more affordable, he says there’s no excuse not to use it.
“So it should be very easy if politicians got on the side of common sense for us to continue to advance our renewables portfolio.”
From 11 am to 3 pm, local environmental groups hosted this first San Antonio Sun Day, an educational family-friendly “day of action,” calling for large-scale use of affordable, reliable, and “ready to go” solar power. Displays promoted electric cars, solar ovens, and portable solar devices, demonstrating the ease and affordability of solar-powered utilities.
Alamo Group of the Sierra Club’s Jim Royston demonstrated solar powered ovens, simple boxy contraptions placed outside under the sun, one with a chicken dish, and the other with pecans.
How long does it take to cook something?
“Generally for me, it is about two hours,” Royston says.
What cooks best with it?
“Stuff with a lot of liquids. Stews and those types [of] things. I also dry walnuts and pecans, because from the store, they’re not really even worth eating until you dry them out; you dry them out and it’s like night and day better.”
He keeps his conventional ovens as back-ups, but prefers solar ovens as they don’t heat up the house. The Alamo Group of the Sierra Club hosted a display table to educate homeowners who wish to install solar panels.
Alan Montemayor is the club’s chapter chair.
“What we have determined, from a national standpoint, is that we are not going to have any support, and from a Texas standpoint, we’re going to have very little support,” he says. “The Sierra Club motto is, ‘Think globally, act locally,’ and that is what this meeting today is all about. We are asking everyone here to vote with their pocketbook. We all breathe the same air, and we all drink the same water.”
If the White House administration isn’t supportive of renewables, consumers still have tremendous power: purchasing power.
Where you spend the almighty dollar is also a way of voting.
Sun Day organizers assert that solar power is “the cheapest form of electricity in history,” with costs declining by nearly 90% over the last decade.
“We want to energize San Antonians to support change and demand cleaner, renewable energy,” says Third Act Texas’ Peter Bella. “We aim to show policy makers that people across the region want solar power… to change current laws and policies stifling the transition to clean energy.”
Environmental activists are sending a clear message to state leaders: tools are in place to power communities with clean energy, and there’s overwhelming public support for it.
Third Act Texas, The Alamo Group of the Sierra Club, Citizens' Climate Lobby, Climate Reality Project, Public Citizen, and Eco SA Collaborative, guide and support the community in renewable energy adoption.
For those interested in solar energy, contact CPS Energy at 210- 22- SOLAR. Learn about other CPS Energy rebates at 210-353-2SAV. See also bringsolarhome.com. ◼︎
