Four Seasons YMCA

Heavy Energy User Covered 97% of Power Needs with Solar

With an indoor pool, indoor track, ball courts, and exercise areas, the Four Seasons YMCA in Tazewell, VA, was a small rural non-profit with a big city electric bill. At more than $10,000 a month, plus additional cost for propane, the cost to power the Y’s physical plant was higher than its expense on salaries.

“It shouldn’t be that way,” Executive Director Shawn Durham told Appalachian Voices, “Your payroll should be your biggest, but it’s not. And because that hinders us so much, we have to ask a lot of people on our staff to do more than one thing, and we run a bare bones crew, and we’ve cut about every cost that we can cut.”  

The local utility has raised rates by more than 46% in the past few years. But the YMCA’s solar power system installed in 2024 by Secure Solar Futures is expected to save $40,000 per year on power costs, or between $3,000 and $4,000 per month on average.

What made it affordable for a small YMCA to cover nearly all its power usage with solar was that Secure Solar Futures was able to develop the project at no upfront cost to the Y through a power purchase agreement.

“Secure Solar Futures actually owns that array,” Durham said. “We’re gonna purchase our electricity from them at a lot cheaper rate than what the power company charges.”

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Four Seasons YMCA ground mount