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Solar Power For a Wastewater Plant

In Coshocton, population almost 36,000, officials are getting ready to cast their vote for a local solar company so small it doesn’t even have its own web page.

Called Solar Vision LLC, the Westerville-based company, which recently appointed Tom van Cleef as managing director and vice president, has offered to provide the city with a 355-kilowatt system, which would generate about 1,155 kilowatt hours per day, or enough to run a large, American home.

The solar array would be set up in an area behind the wastewater plant, on South Second Street, to provide about 45 percent of the plant’s needs on a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) that would deliver the electricity for 15 percent less than the water utility currently pays regional utility American Electric Power, or AEP.

Solar Vision LLC’s account manager, Jamie Albert, could not give exact savings figures for the solar installation, since AEP’s rates and fees vary throughout the year, depending on the type of power purchased, peak demand rates, and service charges allocated by the utility based on use, but Albert estimated that the solar array would save the city about $4,100 annually.

The other 55 percent of electricity needed by the water utility would continue to be provided by AEP, one of the nation’s largest utilities (at five million customers across 11 states) whose generation mix is 68 percent coal, 23 percent natural gas, 6 percent nuclear, two percent power pumped from storage (from excess generation) and less than 1 percent renewables like hydro and wind.

AEP, which justly earned its reputation in 2000 as the head of the “Dirty Dozen” – a consortium of 12 power companies sued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Dept. of Justice for Clean Air Act violations – led the list by virtue of its five polluting coal-fired generation plants (the term “Dirty Dozen” has since been expunged from the record). AEP owns and operates about 80 power plants and the largest transmission system in the country.

Once Coshocton’s solar array is paid for, in terms of the PPA, it can buy the array outright or stay with Solar Vision at a 30-percent discount and a portion of the renewable energy credits, or RECs.

Coshocton’s bill for the water treatment plant is currently about $4,500 per month. The cost of installing the solar array, estimated at about $2 million, would be absorbed by Solar Vision LLC in exchange for the federal tax credit, RECs, and power sold through the array.

Solar Vision LLC, which has already raised $10 million in venture capital (for this and other projects), would maintain the system at its own expense. The installation is expected to take five days and, based on Ohio solar irradiance studies already performed by Solar Vision LLC – which show values the same as Germany’s, the country with the most solar installations in the world – the system should provide at least 45 percent of needed electricity.

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