Macon Business Goes Green and Makes a Profit With Solar Panels

MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – A Macon business is soaking up the sun to reduce the cities carbon footprint.  Thursday Damaste Real Estate and Main Street Macon unveiled a new solar panel project that generates on-site power.

On top of the parking garage at 414 Cherry Street in downtown Macon you will find 235 watt solar panels and a monitoring system that reports hourly and daily energy production.

“It’s very interesting when you look at the numbers that we’re producing everyday and the amount of carbon that we’re saving just in this alone.  But as with anything it is a business decision and with this we’re selling excess power back to Georgia Power and so at the end of the day there was also a business objective here,” Aubrey Newby, Damaste Real Estate.

During the first five years of installing the solar panels the company is expected to offset more than $27,000 through the Georgia Power Buyback Program.  Also, we will see an environmental offset of 23 tons of carbon dioxide per year.