Alex Beamer, the owner of Life Source Natural Foods, has been fascinated with renewable energy systems for most of his adult life. In his own words he is a renewable energy junky. In 1977 Alex bought Breitenbush Hot Springs, and over many years transformed it from a dilapidated 1920s resort, to a thriving conference center. When Alex bought Breitenbush only one of the over 100 buildings where habitable; now it is a healing and education destination for thousands of people a year. Part of the transformation that occurred during Alex's time at Breitenbush was the rebuilding of the hydro electric system to supply electricity, and the installation of a geothermal heat exchanger for heating the buildings from the volcanically heated water under the property.

Alex had wanted to install solar on Life Source Natural Foods for many years but was concerned about the cost to the business and the issues around working with the owner of the building that Life Source leases from. After carefully looking at all the projects costs and determining which tax credit and incentives were available for his project, Alex contacted several contractors to look at the site and propose designs for the project. He liked working with our company because of our attention to details such as identifying the mechanical equipment and telephone poles that shaded the roof, mapping the shaded areas, and positioning the solar array away from of shaded areas.

We chose a ballasted solar array support structure for this project because Life Source Natural Foods does not own the building where the store operates. A ballasted system uses far fewer penetrations through the roof and is simply held in place by the weight of concrete blocks. This makes a ballasted system much easier to remove from the building if Life Source decides to move locations in the future.