Mission Park Funeral Chapels and Cemeteries is spending about $240,000 on an investment that CEO Dick Tips says will pay for itself in four years and produce good clean profits thereafter.
And all he has to do is wait for the Texas sun to do its thing.
San Antonio’s largest funeral home has installed solar panels on eight of its facilities at a total cost of more than $1 million, enough to offset 50 percent of the company’s energy costs, Tips said.
Annually, the solar panels are projected to generate 778,735 kilowatt-hours of electricity, according to a press release from Freedom Solar, which installed the panels. Homeowners typically use about 1,000 kilowatt-hours per month.
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“This is comparable to eliminating the greenhouse gas emissions from 116 passenger vehicles driven for one year, recycling 174 tons of waste instead of taking that amount to the landfill, or powering 58 homes’ worth of electricity for one year,” Freedom Solar said.
Mission Park received almost half of the funds — $482,638 — from CPS’s rebate program. Another 30 percent of the costs were covered by federal tax credits. This left Mission Park to pay for roughly 24 percent of the total cost.
With the rebates, Tips said he expects the panels to pay for themselves in a little over four years.
“It’s hard to find … an investment out there that will pay you back in that short a period of time,” Tips said.
The panels, manufactured by SunPower and installed by Freedom Solar, are guaranteed for 25 years, said Kyle Frazier, director of sales for Freedom. Frazier said the total lifetime of the panels is between 35 and 40 years.
CPS’ rebate program is capped at $80,000 per location for commercial businesses, but because Mission Park installed solar panels at eight locations, its total rebate was close to $500,000.
Local solar leaders have credited the rebate program for boosting solar jobs in Bexar County. Bexar had the second most solar jobs in Texas in 2016, trailing only Harris County, according to the Solar Foundation.
Tips, 63, said committing to cleaner energy is crucial for the people that come after him, like his two five-year-old children.
“I think it’s the right thing to do for the next generation,” Tips said.
The solar panels are part of a bigger clean energy push from Mission Park, which has a fleet of 18 electric Smart cars for employees to use and is installing more energy-efficient light bulbs and air conditioning systems.
“Anything you do to start moving toward being more energy efficient is good for your company,” Tips said.
Tips said he expects Mission Park, which was founded in 1907, to add more solar panels to its eight other locations in the coming years.
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