Power to the People

I’ve seen the future. Actually, I’ve walked through it. And I can tell you, it’s pretty muddy. At least that was the case when I toured WNC’s very first large-scale solar power farm near Canton today. The site of almost 200 solar panels spreads across a relatively small patch of land in the middle of a grass-covered landfill. The 10’x20’ sheets of metallic black cells look face the sun, while a nearby power converter hums as it adjusts the current of electricity to be sent downhill, across the river, to power an estimated 50 to 60 homes.

(Video from WLOS: http://www.wlos.com/shared/newsroom/top_stories/wlos_vid_1864.shtml)

Okay, that doesn’t sound like much output, but this solar field took only 6 moths to build, requires little maintenance and no fuel, produces no pollution, and resides on land that is otherwise unusable for a good many years. What’s more the field’s geographic footprint is only a little more than three acres on the landfill—that’s like a postage stamp on a manila envelope.

As the concept of solar energy proves itself to be a viable, hopefully Western North Carolina will likely become the model for how to do it right: Asheville’s FLS Energy (www.flsenergy.com) obtained a free 20-year lease on the land from Evergreen Packaging (www.evergreenpackaging.com, but you know them as Canton’s paper mill), in exchange for maintaining the land—land that has little use for a good many years. And Progress Energy offered to buy FLS’ organically farmed electrons for resale to the local community. In the end, it’s clean energy and tax credits all around as Western North Carolina shows the region what’s to come for the future of clean energy.