This week, the military housing manufacturer Actus Lend Lease and FSL Energy announced that they have teamed to add solar hot water heating systems — also called solar thermal systems — to 900 homes at the Marine Corps’ Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. The project, already underway, is the biggest solar thermal initiative in the continental United States.

Each system comes with a four-by-ten-foot solar thermal panel, controls, piping and a solar hot water tank. Fifty of the 900 systems have already been installed at the North Carolina military community. When completed, the installations are projected to provide roughly 75 percent of hot-water usage within the Camp Lejeune community.

FSL Energy is installing the systems at Camp Lejeune and selling the generated energy to the camp at a rate that is less than fossil fuel rate for the same job. The installations should significantly reduce the camp’s carbon footprint, as one-fourth the annual energy usage in an average home in North Carolina goes to heating water for domestic use.