Morning for Solar

In a post this January called “Sunrise for Solar?” I described a Solid Waste/Environmental Concerns (SWEC) committee meeting at which we discussed a proposal to build a 2MW solar array on empty County land and buy the power from the private consortium of local investors who would pay for the array to be built. Shortly after that, I attended a NY Association of Counties conference in Albany, where I sat in on a workshop featuring a company called Solar City, which made the same proposal, except that they, Solar City, would own the array.

I brought this company to the attention of SWEC Chair Linda Rowinski, and she made contact with Solar City. At today's SWEC meeting, they made their second presentation. At this point, the array could be 3MW (80% of the County's needs) and it could be sited on a tapped out gravel pit (apparently called a 'boneyard') on County Rt. 11, between West Oneonta and Laurens. As in the January presentation, Solar City would build, own and maintain the array, and sell the power to the County at a rate guaranteed for 20 years – a rate which starts out lower than current costs.

It turns out that there is an annual round of NYS funding that Solar City, and the competing company I wrote about in January, are involved in, and they needed to have our approval to proceed in our behalf. SWEC gave that approval to both companies; the plan is to go with the plan that earns approval. If both are approved, we can choose between them. Good news! And more to come.

Two interesting points. When balancing the options, the Committee did not (at least out loud) consider the value of solar vs. hydrocarbons as a source of electric power. I think that would be worth a cent or two – probably more – per kilowatt hour, if it came down to that. But I'm not a Committee member, just an interested Representative, so I didn't have a say.

Second, there was some mention of the fact that the old boneyard was screened from view by an encircling berm (which is, apparently, true of all working gravel pits); this was seen as an advantage, because it would be hidden from view. I would prefer the array be in plain sight. We need to see the future, because the future – renewable power from clean, nearly eternal sources – is beautiful.