Keeping energy production in state and jobs within our community is a priority for many of us, and should be a unifying goal.
Some of us think renewable energy, particularly solar, is the way forward to help West Virginians.
Slowly but surely state industry, communities and legislation are accepting this opportunity. I’ve written about solar before, and curious for an update I checked in with Joey James and Evan Hansen.
Evan is the owner of Downstream Strategies as well as Mon County delegate, and Joey is a Downstream Strategies employee.
“The thing about solar in West Virginia is we have significantly less solar within the state than you’ll find in surrounding states,” Joey told me, noting that we have similar resources to our neighbors.
Lately, part of his job has been surveying reclaimed mine lands for solar installation possibilities.
In 2016, Down Stream Strategies published a report about the viability of this idea. They found about 220 square miles of mined lands suitable for solar arrays.
Just this year, large array projects have started. Evan said two are in the works — one from utility Appalachian Power Co. in the southern part of the state and the other, the Raleigh Solar Farm in Raleigh County, a non-utility.
The latter’s company projections say the farm will generate a peak output of about 90 Megawatts of (clean) power. This amount of power is roughly equivalent to the needs of 16,000 West Virginia homes annually.
The Raleigh Solar Farm has garnered mixed reactions, including support from the Beckley-Raleigh County Chamber of Commerce, which released a statement in favor of the project — they said this project is not an alternative to coal, but rather a diversification of the state’s energy, which will increase the area’s economic opportunities.
“We need to see how these first large-scale solar installations pan out,” Evan said, noting that once they are built and running, “I think it’s going to snowball, because it makes economic sense.”
“There are many different types of jobs created by solar,” Evan said, listing building, manufacturing (including locally made steel beams), as well as long-term jobs brought by companies (tech companies, among others) looking to expand with renewable energy.
Let’s circle back to the location of these large installations. “We are one of the first entities to start looking at these former land sites (no pun intended) in this type of light,” Joey said.
I’d heard this plan before, and thought it a great use of damaged lands. But it makes even more sense on another level.
Joey explained that in surveying potential sites, he considers whether all permits are released, whether the land is relatively flat (can be hard to find beyond mine lands in this state), accessibility to a graded road system, and the proximity to electrical distribution network.
“A lot of large-scale mine sites are more or less ready to go,” Joey said. They already have roads and electrical hookups because the mining companies also needed those. I hadn’t considered the requirements for solar installation or already existing resources; this information about site suitability increased my enthusiasm for solar even more.
The way I see it, installing solar arrays on reclaimed mine lands wouldn’t put said mines out of business. They wouldn’t make folks in the community lose mining jobs. Instead they would provide new job opportunities for the folks who used to rely on the presently mined out sites.
“What better way to breathe some life into these local communities?” Joey said, then utilizing 21st century energy production.
