Adventure Science Center is making solar a hands-on experience for its visitors.
Located in Nashville, Tennessee, the museum partnered with Everybody Solar to install a 72.32 kW rooftop solar array in a project that blends renewable energy, education, and community impact. Everybody Solar aimed to do more than reduce Adventure Science Center’s electricity bills by approximately $10,956 annually. A major goal of the project was to create an experience that would inspire and educate the facility’s 382,000 annual visitors, including more than 75,000 students from 73 Tennessee school systems.
In addition to providing energy, Adventure Science Center is using the solar array to provide a hands-on learning experience. When guests arrive, they can explore the impact of the solar array through an interactive kiosk, which provides real-time insights into how weather conditions affect solar energy production. A new “exploded” solar panel exhibit allows visitors to see inside a working solar module, layer by layer. This interactive display turns complex technology into something tactile and understandable.
The solar array is expected to generate more than 102,009 kWh of renewable electricity per year. The cost savings will allow Adventure Science Center to invest more in their programs and services.
Nashville | 72.32 kW
Project Details
Developer: Everybody Solar, ReNew Solar Solutions | EPC/Installer: ReNew Solar Solutions | Modules: SunPower | Inverters: CPS



Background
Several factors led to the Adventure Science Center pursuing solar at the facility, according to Morgan Rehnberg, VP of exhibits and experiences at the museum.
“We’re always looking to embody the future of technology and certainly energy technology is a piece of that,” Rehnberg says. “At the same time, we are located in what’s mostly a pretty aging building, and so we have quite high power usage. We’re trying to work to see how can we reduce our power consumption and kind of ‘green’ the building.”
Officials at the Adventure Science Center reached out to colleagues at other museums in Tennessee and learned about a company that helps nonprofit organizations install solar.
“The folks in Chattanooga said they had just completed this great partnership with a group called Everybody Solar and had had a lot of success in putting solar panels on their roof through that project,” Rehnberg says. “And so we were excited to connect with Everybody Solar and the rest is history.”
Hands-on learning
As part of the rooftop solar project, Adventure Science Center also wanted to include an interactive educational exhibit about solar.
“We find that visitors to the Science Center learn best when they’re able to directly interact with what they’re learning about,” Rehnberg says. “It’s one thing to look out the window and see the solar panels. It’s another to actually kind of go hands-on. We really explored with this project how could we allow visitors to explore what it means to generate power from the sun and then: what actually are solar panels? We all see them on the roofs of houses and buildings. We hear about them on TV, but most people have never really come up close to one of them.”
Rehnberg explains that the exhibit aspect of the project had three parts to it:
- The first part was a model that showed an exploded view of a solar panel, allowing visitors to see each individual layer of the panel and how they come together.
- The second component was an interactive kiosk that recorded the real-time output of the solar panel, along with various weather-related effects in the city.
- The third piece was a graphic that led visitors to resources from the Department of Energy to evaluate whether their home would be a good use case for solar power.
Adding an educational aspect to the solar project was not new for Everybody Solar, says executive director Myriam Scally.
“Having hands-on experience allows people to engage in a different way,” Scally says.
Funding innovation
Everybody Solar was founded in 2011 by Youness Scally, Myriam’s brother, with the idea that nonprofits struggled more than for-profit businesses in attaining solar. To help nonprofits fund solar projects, Everybody Solar has formed long-term partnerships with foundations to supply grants, in addition to securing corporate sponsorships and donations.
“Our funding is usually a blend,” she says. “In this case, for the Adventure Science Center, we had a diverse blend of foundation grants, corporate sponsorships, and then generous contributions from individual donors.”
Rehnberg considers the funding model as one of the most innovative aspects of the project.
“I’m not aware of any other groups that are working in this fashion to put solar power on community buildings like this,” he says. “And it was certainly something that caught our eye as an organization that has our own fundraising needs for other projects, that there was a partner who was willing to come in and do all the work like Everybody Solar was. That was the difference between us being able to do this project and not being able to do it.”