The village of Montpelier will soon join a growing list of towns, villages and cities that are going green.
Ten acres on the west side of County Road 13, just south of East Main Street, have been purchased by the village for the installation of a solar field.
The project is now in the design phase, with installation expected to start in the spring, according to Jason Rockey, Montpelier village manager.
The acreage was purchased by the village for $50,000. Rockey said outside of purchasing the power produced by the field for the next 30 years, that financial outlay is the extent of the village’s financial responsibility.
The work is being done by a company called Eitri Foundry LLC. Zack Sadowsky, director of business development for Eitri Foundry, said the company is based in Orlando, Florida, and has installed several other similar solar projects, including one in the village of Monroeville, in northern Ohio.
“That field (in Monroeville) is about 4 megawatts (4MW) and is a fixed-tilt system. The project in Montpelier will be just under 3 MW, but Montpelier’s will be a single-axis tracking system, meaning the solar panels will rotate from east to west throughout the day, following the path of the sun,” Sadowsky told The Bryan Times last week.
Eitri will do all the installation, maintenance and servicing of the 8,500 panels. The electricity purchased equals approximately one-third of the cost the village is paying for electricity from American Municipal Power (AMP) Ohio.
“We feel it’s in the best interest of the village,” said Rockey. “We’re moving toward sustainable energy, and it will help our customers too.”
Rockey said the project is state-of-the-art.
“Our peak time for electricity usage is between 4 and 6 p.m.,” he said. “The panels will produce the most electricity between 12:30 and 1 p.m., but they will help offset some of our peak usage, when the cost of electricity is the highest.”
When completed, the field will produce about 2.8 megawatts per hour. Sadowsky said one megawatt typically represents enough power to supply anywhere from 100 to 200 houses with power.
Rockey said the solar field will help the village avoid purchasing electricity during “peak power times,” when it is the most expensive.
Sadowsky said the field, when completed, will produce about 4 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy annually.
In addition, Eitri will provide native grasses and a wildflower pollinator program for ground cover around the field.
Rockey said at the end of the 30-year period, the village of Montpelier assumes ownership of the land and equipment.
BRYAN SOLAR
In early December 2011, Bryan Municipal Utilities broke ground on a $7.42 million, 14-acre solar field project west of Bryan along Ohio 34. By mid-January 2012, 23,530 solar modules were in place, and by mid-February 2012 the entire two-megawatt solar array was generating power distributed onto Bryan’s power grid.
At the time it came online in early 2012, the two-megawatt solar array was one of the largest public power utility solar projects in Ohio.
The solar field now generates more than 2.65 million kilowatt-hours of clean, renewable energy annually — enough to power 260 average Bryan homes, according to information from the BMU website, www.cityofbryan.net.
The project was a partnership between BMU, national building contractor Rudolph Libbe and Key Bank. Financing — including a grant covering part of the project — was arranged through Key Government Finance, which in turn leased the solar field to BMU for 10 years. At the end of the lease period, BMU has the option to purchase the solar array.
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