The Monastery of Christ in the Desert

The Monastery of Christ in the Desert is a remote monastery located along the Chama river, north of Abiquiu. The monastery does not have access to the electric grid or natural gas lines, and is striving to develop environmentally sustainable practices. The monastery’s heating and electricity needs are primarily met with solar and supplemented with propane.

Following our mission of helping communities become energy self-reliant, Local Energy finalized the heating and electricity designs (initially created by Mark Sardella as an independent engineer) for the new 10,000 square foot wing of the monastery.

Once the new wing is completed, the solar electricity at the monastery will be generated from several independent systems consisting of a total of 340 photovoltaic panels and having a generating capacity of 27.54 kW of power. Electricity is used to power everything from the refrigeration system, lighting, and groundwater pumping, to computers and a satellite high-speed internet system.

The heating systems for the monk’s cloister and the new wing at the monastery consist of flat-plate solar collectors that absorb the sun’s energy to heat water. The energy from the heated water is then used for space heating and domestic hot water. The heating systems currently use propane-fired boilers to supplement the solar collectors, but the potential of replacing the propane boilers with biomass-fired boilers is being investigated.
To learn more about the monastery, please click HERE.