The Sun Shines In Vermont!

U.S. Solar Pow­er Test­ing Site to Be Built in Vt.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from San­dia, IBM, and the U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy joined Ver­mont Gov. Peter Shum­lin, sec­ond from left, and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, right, to launch the region­al cen­ter to help test solar tech­nol­o­gy on Mon­day, Nov. 4, 2013 in Willis­ton, Vt. Offi­cials announced the Ver­mont region­al test cen­ter will be one of five across the coun­try designed to find ways to make solar pow­er more afford­able. The sev­en-acre site in Willis­ton will accom­mo­date up to 300 kilo­watts of solar pow­er. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot)

By Wil­son Ring

Asso­ci­at­ed Press­No­vem­ber 5, 2013

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from San­dia, IBM, and the U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy joined Ver­mont Gov. Peter Shum­lin, sec­ond from left, and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, right, to launch the region­al cen­ter to help test solar tech­nol­o­gy on Mon­day, Nov. 4, 2013 in Willis­ton, Vt. Offi­cials announced the Ver­mont region­al test cen­ter will be one of five across the coun­try designed to find ways to make solar pow­er more afford­able. The sev­en-acre site in Willis­ton will accom­mo­date up to 300 kilo­watts of solar pow­er. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot)

Willis­ton, Vt. — A sev­en-acre field in Willis­ton is being con­vert­ed into an out­door lab­o­ra­to­ry where sci­en­tists and engi­neers will study the effec­tive­ness of solar pan­els when used in areas known for bad weath­er and long, cold win­ters, offi­cials said Monday.

Once con­struc­tion is com­plete, the field will accom­mo­date pan­els capa­ble of con­vert­ing sun­light into as much as 300 kilo­watts of solar power.

The Ver­mont loca­tion, near the pop­u­lar Taft Cor­ners retail area, will be fund­ed by the U.S. Depart­ment of Energy’s Sun­Shot Ini­tia­tive. It is one of five sim­i­lar test loca­tions across the coun­try where solar pan­els will be test­ed under dif­fer­ent cli­mac­tic conditions.

The ini­tia­tive has a goal of reduc­ing the cost of solar ener­gy by 75 per­cent by 2020 and help­ing the coun­try get 15 per­cent of its elec­tric­i­ty from the sun by 2030.

“The sun shines in all 50 states,” said Minh Le, pro­gram man­ag­er of the fed­er­al government’s Solar Ener­gy Tech­nolo­gies Pro­gram. He not­ed at Monday’s event that the cur­rent world leader in solar pow­er pro­duc­tion is Ger­many, which gets about as much sun as Alaska.

“When you imag­ine that solar can be a sig­nif­i­cant part of Germany’s elec­tric­i­ty grid, it can also do that in the Unit­ed States, and we have a lot more sun than Ger­many,” Le said.

State and fed­er­al offi­cials who announced the cre­ation of the Ver­mont Pho­to­volta­ic Region­al Test Cen­ter on Mon­day are hop­ing test results lead to a reduced cost of solar ener­gy and help Ver­mont con­tin­ue its effort to find alter­na­tive sources of elec­tric­i­ty and expand the ener­gy effi­cient smart-grid elec­tri­cal system.

The broad­er goal is to reduce the use of fos­sil fuels and reduce glob­al warm­ing while cre­at­ing jobs.

The pan­els will be installed by var­i­ous man­u­fac­tur­ers while their per­for­mance will be mon­i­tored by sci­en­tists from the San­dia Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ries and oth­er organizations.

The Willis­ton loca­tion is a part­ner­ship of the Depart­ment of Ener­gy, San­dia Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ries, IBM and the state of Ver­mont. The project also is being sup­port­ed by Green Moun­tain Pow­er and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vermont.

“Ver­mont is the per­fect place for a test cen­ter focused on solar and the smart-grid,” said inde­pen­dent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has helped lead the push to get the Depart­ment of Ener­gy to choose the state for the test site. “We have a state gov­ern­ment under Gov. (Peter) Shum­lin and local gov­ern­ments through­out the state that wel­come oppor­tu­ni­ties to test and deploy cut­ting edge technologies.”