Photo: Chaiel Schaffel/WBZ NewsRadio
ROXBURY, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — A newly-opened Roxbury apartment building is entirely ditching fossil fuels and saying hello to renewable energy.
The Kenzi in Roxbury is the first mid-rise apartment building Boston to be completely fossil fuel free. Building management says solar panels covering the roof provide about half the energy the building needs, and the rest comes from the power grid. When it's really sunny, the energy is sent back into the power grid, giving money back to the building.
But, perhaps, the biggest innovation is downstairs, in a closed-off concrete room. Where there once were plans for a diesel generator, there are two enormous batteries that look like massive refrigerators. Even a new, all-electric building would typically have an emergency diesel generator built into the design in the event of a power outage or another disaster. The Kenzi ditches even that, replacing it with the batteries.
One of the battery arrays used by the Kenzi in Roxbury. Photo: Chaiel Schaffel
Julie Klump is with Preservation for Affordable Housing, the owner of the building. She said the battery design took numerous meetings with the Boston Fire Department, who were concerned about how to control a fire if one broke out in the battery room, as lithium fires can be extremely difficult to put out. That led several state-of-the-art fire control systems being built into the design.
The building opened for residents last month, and the apartments are geared toward people 55 and over. They are almost all one-beds and below market rate.
WBZ NewsRadio's Chaiel Schaffel (@CSchaffelWBZ) reports.
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