Tour participants should visit www.GreenEnergyOhio.org to sign up.
For more information on Ohio's Advanced Energy Program, see: www.development.ohio.gov/cdd/oee/ELFGrant.htm and www.GreenEnergyOhio.org
DAYTON — The hope that new manufacturing jobs follow a broadening base of renewable energy sources is the message of this weekend’s Ohio Solar Tour throughout 91 communities, including Dayton.
The free tour isn’t just about solar power. It’s also about how wind, biomass and energy efficiency have harnessed savings for homes, businesses, farms, public buildings and utilities.
The tour sponsored by the nonprofit Green Energy Ohio has an unusual online sign-up sheet that arranges a self-guided route illustrated by Google maps.
“This is a great opportunity to see how and where green energy works everyday,” said Bill Spratley, Green Energy Ohio’s executive director. “Our annual solar tour also helps expand Ohio’s growing green energy market, where new green jobs boost our economic recovery.”
There are 13 open houses within 25 miles of downtown Dayton ranging from a straw bale house to homes and farms powered by solar, geothermal and wind energy.
One of those stops is Twenty-First Century Energy LLC, 1 Herald Square, Fairborn. Using a $136,000 grant from the Ohio Department of Development’s Advanced Energy Grant Program, the company built the largest roof top solar array in the Miami Valley.
The grid-connected 190-panel array powers a multi-tenant building that includes a machine shop, company spokeswoman Karen Diehl said.
The array powers about five percent of the building’s heavy power needs. She estimated the array will pay for itself within two-and-a-half years because of the state funding assistance, federal tax credits and incentives. Diehl said it’s a myth that Ohio lacks enough sunshine to make solar power cost effective.
Solar power isn’t the company’s only focus. Although not on the tour this year, the company has a new generation of wind turbines under development.
The company and the University of Dayton Research Institute have been awarded $800,000 in federal funds to develop a low wind speed power turbine for the military. Diehl said the company hopes to put the light-weight military turbines into local production in 2011. Production for a separate line of turbines designed for civilian commercial use could be underway by the end 2010, Diehl said.
“We are designing it and hoping for a supply chain in the Dayton region,” she said.
The turbines, which rise to heights below 100 feet, sit lower to the ground than utility-size turbines. They have potential at forward military bases where they could reduce the need to consume diesel fuel.
Elsewhere in Ohio, there’s been a surge of announcements on the alternative energy front.
On Friday, Oct. 2, Cherokee Run Landfill in Logan County will host a community open house for its new 4.8 megawatt landfill gas project. The landfill consists in part of trash from the Dayton area.
The new facility will generate enough power for 2,800 homes, according to developers DTE Biomass Energy and Shaw Environmental Inc.
What will be one of the larger solar energy fields in the eastern United States will be built on 83 acres outside Upper Sandusky in Wyandot County.
Construction begins in November on the project that will use more than 165,000 panels built by First Solar Inc., which has a manufacturing plant in Perrysburg. It should be completed in summer 2010 and be able to power about 1,500 homes.
American Electric Power, which has a substation nearby, signed a 20-year power agreement with Wyandot Solar LLC, a subsidiary of juwi solar Inc., for output from the 10.08-megawatt facility.
“It is big for Ohio, and we are looking at doing more solar and wind in Ohio,” AEP spokesman Pat Hemlepp said.
For Ohio, the project is a start. By comparison, California utility Pacific Gas and Electric Co. announced that it has signed solar contracts that are expected to produce enough electricity to power about 530,000 homes during peak air-conditioning daylight hours — the nation’s largest solar deal. Other facilities are on the drawing board for Ohio.
A major project that could dot Champaign County’s landscape with wind turbines is moving forward, with public hearings on the proposed sites set for late October. It would include building more than 70 wind turbines across six townships in Champaign County where Ohio’s highest elevations are located.
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