Looking outside the grave for cemetery revenue

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Back almost three years ago in July 2021, Funeral Director Daily brought you this story of how a renewable energy company, Verogy, had put a 7,000 panel solar energy farm inside a cemetery in Torrington, Connecticut.  In essence they took out a 20-year lease on the cemetery property with the energy they harness from the solar power being able to pay the lease payments to the cemetery.

That concept not only was able to bring power generation close to a community that could use it, but it was able to bring revenue to a cemetery that, more than likely, could use it too.  And, it used available space for the solar panels which could be removed following the lease terms, providing additional cemetery space if eventually needed for death care purposes.

Since that time, I think that technology and partnerships have continued to grow.  Here’s a recent (December 2023) article about the same company planning another 17 acre solar farm with the same cemetery group owned and operated by the Catholic Cemeteries Association of the Archdiocese of Hartford.  It’s interesting to note that that 17-acre field would provide the annual power for about 778 “average” homes.

The technology has only gotten better and you can read about municipalities using the open spaces off of airport runways for these types of installations also.  One should note that the closer the solar panels are to the end user of the solar power, the more efficient the situation is.  That fact makes it valuable for these solar farms to be housed in municipal areas and cemeteries are one of the prime areas where land is available in metropolitan areas.

Now, we have learned through this article from Electrek that a community in France is using “solar canopies” to not only collect energy but to also collect rainwater, another valuable use.  And, as you can see by the picture in the article, the canopies do not seem to affect the usage of the cemetery and its operations.  Since, I’m a Minnesotan and we are used to heavy snowfall, I do see potential issues in winter climates. . .although maybe the designers have a solution for that.

In any regard these situations are a development that anybody on the board of a municipal cemetery may want to keep in mind as they wrestle with the revenue issues that have plagued cemeteries during this time of unprecedented cremation choice.

Related — We pass on this archived 2020 press release from our friends at Funeral Director’s Life Company.  The article explains how Funeral Director’s Life, based in Abilene, Texas, switched to 100% solar energy for their corporate offices. . . powered by using a parking lot canopy solar system of 1,300 solar panels.  The press release contains a photo for you to see how this was done.

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