Solar is Winning, Even in Kentucky
It's going up right next to one of the biggest coal-burning plants in the state, which is either super ironic or yet another call to bury the decomposing corpse of Big Coal.
Greg Kocher at the Herald:
Plans are proceeding to build in Mercer County the largest solar-powered generating facility in Kentucky.One of those. Get us one of those big-ass solar plants. Put it on top of a coal-raped mountain. Make my fucking electric company sell me solar energy.
Louisville Gas & Electric Co. and Kentucky Utilities announced Friday that they have secured a contract for engineering, procurement and construction of the facility, and that construction is expected to begin in November.
Amec Foster Wheeler, an engineering and project-management company, has won a competitive bid to build the state's largest photovoltaic facility at the E.W. Brown Generating Station near Burgin and Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill. The generating station uses coal and natural gas to produce electricity.
"Our new solar facility will allow us to learn more about this technology," LG&E and KU Chief Operating Officer Paul W. Thompson said in a release. "From a pragmatic standpoint, we'll learn how commercial-scale solar energy is impacted by factors such as cloud cover and how it integrates with our existing generating units."
The new 10-megawatt facility, approved by the Kentucky Public Service Commission in December, will occupy about 50 acres of the E.W. Brown plant's property. It will consist of more than 45,000 solar panels on a fixed-tilt rack system.
The panels will be positioned to have the best available sunlight for producing energy. The site is projected to produce 19,000 megawatt hours of energy, enough to provide energy to 1,500 homes based on a usage of 1,000 kilowatt hours per month, the release said.
SNIP
The facility is expected to be operational by the late spring of 2016.
SNIP
In April, Amec Foster Wheeler completed one of the largest solar plants in the country at Boulder City, Nev. Situated on 1,400 acres, it taps into intense desert sun to produce energy for about 80,000 homes.
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