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With rooftop solar panels, Metro Nashville’s latest building makes more energy than it consumes

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Metro Water director Scott Potter stands on the roof of Metro’s first net-zero energy building.
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Metro Nashville has its first net-zero energy building.

The new Central Administration Building near the Cumberland River generates more energy than it can use on a daily basis, through energy efficiency and renewable energy generation on-site.

“It has smart lighting, low-flow faucets, automation systems that will automatically raise and lower the temperature in the building based on demand,” Metro Water director Scott Potter said from the building’s roof, which is outfitted with 500 solar panels. The city also planted trees next the building.

The excess power generated by the energy efficient building will be used next door at the Central Water Reclamation Facility.

The building comes about two years after the Metro Council passed green building standards to reduce energy and water usage in Nashville’s government buildings.

Correction: A previous version of this story and headline said the trees were on the roof of the new building. In fact, they are planted on a berm nearby.

Paige Pfleger, Criminal Justice Reporter

Paige Pfleger covers criminal justice for WPLN News. She has investigated guns and juvenile justice as a fellow with ProPublica's Local Reporting Network, and her investigation into domestic violence and firearms dispossession won a regional Edward R. Murrow award and was a finalist for an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award and a Livingston Award. She previously covered criminal justice and addiction in Ohio and was named the state's reporter of the year by the Associated Press. Her work has appeared nationally on NPR, The Washington Post, Marketplace, and PRI's The World, and she has worked in the newsrooms of The Tennessean, Michigan Radio, WHYY, Vox and NPR headquarters in DC.

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