The power will be enough to fuel the entire fire station, with some left over as well.

"It's enough to meet the needs of our fire department, and we have enough excess to meet most of the needs of the library," said Town Administrator Shaun Mulholland.

The panels will be an overall solid investment for the town, according to Mulholland.

"We don't have to lay out the money and we're going to get the (electricity) for the next 20 years," Mulholland said.

The deal spelled out in the easement will be good for the next two decades. After that, officials will need to renegotiate those terms.

The firefighters who work at the station partnered with the architect to design the facility to meet their specific needs and desires, a first in Carmel. The architect used a handwritten sketch from the firefighters when designing the exterior and referenced mock floor plans they created.

Among the firefighters’ requests was a fire pole, upstairs living areas, a large workout area and arched bay doors.

"Our firefighters' safety is paramount. They have to feel safe in the equipment that we provide for them to utilize here to rescue victims, to extinguish fires, to provide a safer community for the city of Alton," said Sebold.

The air packs protect firefighters' respiratory tract by supplying clean air to their lungs so they can enter a smoke-filled building to extinguish a fire, or even stop a chemical leak.

Sebold said the new packs will give firefighters advanced notice of when they're going to be running out of air, helping them escape from a burning building faster.

"Obviously we want our firefighters to have the most up-to-date equipment to provide for their safety and the safety of people we are going in to rescue," said Sebold. "So one of the technological advances are that the alarm on the SCBA alarms at 33% of the air supply that's left as opposed to 25 percent that's left."