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Trumbull gets funds for solar energy
Photo
This is the Trumbull County Department of Job and Family Services building on North Park Avenue just north of Courthouse Square, Warren, where officials plan to mount solar-energy collection panels sometime late this year or early next year with $300,000 in federal stimulus money.
By ED RUNYAN
WARREN
Sometime late this year or early next year, Trumbull County is likely to become the first government body in the Mahoning Valley with a solar-energy collection system.
Trumbull County commissioners learned Tuesday that the county’s application for $300,000 in federal-stimulus money to buy and install the system on the county’s Department of Job and Family Services building downtown has been formally approved.
Trish Nuskievicz, assistant director of the county’s planning commission, said she doesn’t know how much electricity the solar panels will generate or how much money these will save the county, but the benefits are not only financial.
Nuskievicz said she is hopeful that the local electrical workers union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which also has installed solar panels at its facility on Research Parkway in Champion, will be able to participate in the installation of the panels so that its members can obtain a solar-power certification.
The experience of installing the system, being able to demonstrate it to other governments and businesses and the connection to the green- energy incubator planned for downtown Warren hopefully will help solar power “catch on,” Nuskievicz said.
It also could help encourage green-energy companies to locate in some of the vacant buildings in the Warren area, she said.
“We’ve always promoted renewable energy in the county, but it’s always been cost-prohibitive,” Nuskievicz said. “Once people can see the cost savings, it can catch on.”
If the system is able to collect more energy than the building uses at a given time, the excess energy goes back into the “power grid,” and the county will get credits for power that can be used at another time, she said.
A few more steps are required before the county can put the project out to bid, but Nuskievicz hopes it can occur sometime late this year. The project has a deadline for completion of summer 2011.
The Job and Family Services building was chosen for the project because it has a new roof. The county acquired and renovated the building on North Park Avenue just north of Courthouse Square several years ago.
The system being installed will generate between 42 and 50 kilowatt-hours of electricity, which Nuskievicz says is likely to be enough to power four average homes or 349 computers.