While the new solar panels installed at St. William Church last week will likely save the parish some money on utility bills, finances had little to do with the parish’s decision to harness the sun’s energy.

“It’s spiritual for us,” said Sharan Benton, the parish’s pastoral administrator. “We want to be out in the forefront trying to protect the environment and do our part to help save the environment because of how quickly it’s deteriorating for the next generation.

“We should take care of it as we take care of one another,” she noted. “It’s our responsibility as human beings.”

St. William follows in the footsteps of the Vatican, which installed more than 2,000 solar panels on its Paul VI audience hall last fall. The $1.5 million system was a gift to the pontiff from a German company.

A handful of volunteers at St. William installed the 15 photovoltaic cells — panels that are about 6 feet tall and 2-and-a-half feet wide — on Earth Day, April 22. The panels line the south-facing roof at the parish at 12th and Oak streets, and they are expected to supply about 30 percent of the church’s power.

The solar array is linked into the church’s utility meter, and during the week, when the church isn’t in use, its meter runs backward and power is available to other LG&E customers.

An array such as the one installed at St. William costs about $26,000. But Sun Wind Power Systems, Inc., sold the array to St. William at a discounted price of $18,000.

Kentucky Interfaith Power and Light (IPL), an organization led by St. William parishioner Tim Darst, raised $9,000 for the panels, and the church matched the remaining sum. IPL is a non-profit organization that aims to encourage conservation and other ways to protect the earth in religious communities.

Darst, who is also a member of St. William Church’s environmental committee, said the parish has taken a number of steps toward conservation over the last couple of years.

The parish has installed a programmable thermostat to control its heat use, sealed its windows to reduce drafts, replaced incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs and attached a box to its mail slot to reduce the amount of heat that escapes.

“The next logical step was to look at solar panels,” said Darst, who installed a solar array on his house a few years ago. “We had heard about other churches around the country doing it and the Vatican.

“Over 90 percent of Kentucky’s electricity comes from burning coal,” he noted. “That has a lot of adverse effects,” including air pollution. And, he said, mining for coal through mountaintop removal “pollutes water and destroys homes.”

“As a social justice group, we’ve always been concerned about the most vulnerable — people living in Appalachia and people living in the shadows of a power plant,” he said. “In order to love our neighbors, we can’t abuse the earth at their expense.”

Darst uses solar energy in his home, and his office runs entirely on renewable energy. Sun Wind Power did both projects for Darst. And last week the company’s owner, Jeremy Coxon, and an employee helped volunteers install the panels at St. William at no cost.

Coxon and his wife Pat, a Presentation Academy graduate, co-own the company based in Floyds Knobs, Ind. Jeremy Coxon said they wanted to help make the array affordable for St. William because “it’s the right thing to do.”

“This church has done so many progressive things,” said Coxon. “What Tim has done with Interfaith Power and Light is magical. He put a lot of his own efforts into it. We wanted to do the same thing.”

Coxon noted that churches are good candidates for solar energy because the buildings typically are used for decades.

“If you have a building that’s going to be using power for 100 years and you can put in a system that will produce for 50 years, that’s a good investment,” he said.

St. William parishioners hope to add more panels to its array in the future, Darst said. Other future conservation efforts include plans to install LEDs (lights that last longer and use less energy than traditional lighting) in the church’s red EXIT signs, and “we now use spotlights on the musicians so they can see their music. We plan to get LED desk lights for them,” Darst said.

The parish also is taking part in the city’s Kilowatt Crackdown, a competition with other metro Louisville buildings to reduce the amount of power used in the course of a year.