Colorado Springs Utilities put the project out to bid and heard back from 21 solar power providers, Romero said. Ultimately, the utility and Air Force Academy chose SunPower, the country’s largest manufacturer of traditional crystalline photovoltaic solar panels.

SunPower combines high-efficiency panels, operating at 22 percent efficiency, with a special sun-tracking technology to maximize energy production, SunPower President Jim Pape said.

He told a crowd of Air Force and town dignitaries at the groundbreaking ceremony on Monday that he felt they made the right choice in this very competitive bidding process.

He is confident the SunPower technology will make a big difference in the solar array’s production and that SunPower will outshine the 20 competitors they beat out for the contract. He said that if Colorado Springs Utilities and the Academy had partnered with anyone else, they likely would have been celebrating a four-megawatt system rather than a six-megawatt one.

“The difference is a big one,” Pape told the crowd.

Air Force Academy General Mike Gould congratulated those who brought the project to fruition.

“This is cool,” Gould said. “This is probably the best way I can think of to spend American Recovery and Reinvestment money.”

He said the project will reduce the Academy’s fossil fuel consumption by 11 percent, generate enough energy to power 1,600 four-person homes, make the Academy an example among Air Force bases around the world of how green energy can make a difference and save the base “half a million dollars a year, while we’re at it.”

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