After waiting nearly a year for the wrinkles to be ironed out of the cash grant portion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), Eldorado Artesian Springs Inc., a Louisville, Colorado-based bottler of spring water working from a natural spring in Eldorado, is ready to convert its operation to solar.

ARRA, passed in February of this year, provided the mechanism to deliver cash grants (worth 30 percent of a project’s cost) in lieu of tax credits at its inception, but it wasn’t until late June that regulators defined the rules under which the grants would be allocated.

Those rulings, combined with a loosening of credit markets nationwide as the economy began to improve, allowed Eldorado to proceed with the installation of a 100-kilowatt solar array comprising more than 450 panels.

The array will provide enough power to Eldorado’s bottling operations to account for 50 percent of energy needs, and will offset more than four million pounds of greenhouse gases over its lifetime, or the equivalent of taking more than 21 cars off the road over the next quarter-century, or planting 35 acres of trees. If used residentially, the solar energy could power about 80 to 100 homes.

The system was installed by Boulder-based Namaste Solar Electric, a design-build solar energy firm that is 100-percent employee-owned. Namaste, which has about 55 employees, is rising from the ashes on the activation of ARRA’s cash grant program, which allows companies to bypass their tax liability status (or lack thereof, given the recession) and claim a portion of ARRA’s renewable energy funding.

The panels themselves are owned by Boulder-based Next Gen Energy Partners, a renewable energy investment firm which provides venture capital. Not to be confused with Next Generation Energy of Lafayette, Colorado, an installer of solar energy systems.

Eldorado is Namaste’s first large-scale solar project since the recession hit in December of 2007, and company officials hope to see other projects sidelined by the economy put back on the table.

Namaste credits its survival during 2008 and 2009 to Boulder’s ClimateSmart program, which provided low-interest loans to homeowners who wanted to add solar panels to their roofs. If not for that steady trickle of small, residential jobs, the revenue sharing model on which Namaste is based would have failed.

Now, as the nation emerges from one of the worst recessions since the Great Depression, ARRA and programs like ClimateSmart may be just the impetus needed to put solar energy over the top of that magical 1 percent (of U.S. energy generation) that seems to stand as a barrier not only to grid parity but to the adoption of solar as a viable energy source.