Twin Ridges Wind Farm in Somerset County, Pa

The environmental group, PennFuture, reports (with delight) that two new utility-size wind farms are operating in the Keystone State.

Everpower’s 139.4 MW Twin
Ridges Wind Farm on
Big Savage Ridge in Somerset County started making power on December 21, 2012.
The farm has 68 turbines that make enough electricity to power 33,303 homes
homes each year. This wind farm is also a big plus for the local economy,
delivering up to $223,000 annually, to be shared among the four townships where
the turbines are located, and sending at least $93,000 each year to the Berlin
and Meyersdale School Districts combined. What’s more, Somerset County will get
at least $37,000 per year, and 89 landowners will receive over $1.5 million in
royalty, easement, and other payments. 

The
second Pennsylvania wind farm to start spinning is also the state’s largest —
the 144 MW Mehoopany Wind Farm in
Wyoming County, owned by BP Wind Energy. The $250 million project has 88 wind
turbines, enough to power around 34,402 homes each year. More than 400 people
worked on the project during the peak of construction, and 10 to 15 workers
will 

PennFuture notes that, now with a total of 21 wind farms, Pennsylvania has 1.2 gigawatts of
installed wind capacity that can produce enough electricity to power nearly 300,000 homes
each year.

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Do you live in Pennsylvania? Would like to see wind energy continue to grow? PennFuture has a suggestion for you: Buy it! 


If you live in the Duquesne Light territory (Allegheny and Beaver Counties), you can sign up to switch through Community Energy (and they’ll send a donation to PennFuture at no additional cost to you). Residents and businesses in other areas can sign up through Choose PA Wind.

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New York Times photo

A report in today’s NJSpotlight paints a pretty depressing picture of New Jersey’s formerly red-hot solar energy marketplace.

In December, preliminary figures from the state Office of Clean Energy indicate that just nine megawatts of new arrays were installed in New Jersey that month, a significant drop-off from the rapid pace of previous months, when 42 megawatts were developed in October 2011 alone.

 The decline reflects a steep drop in the prices that owners of solar systems earn for the electricity their arrays produce, which have fallen from a high in the mid-$600 range 18 months ago to as low as $70 in recent days. That collapse has dried up investment in New Jersey’s solar market, once second behind only California in the number of solar installations.

“Everyone I talk to says the money has left New Jersey,’’ said Fred DeSanti, a lobbyist who represents a number of solar and renewable energy businesses. “It’s absolutely dead.’’

Public Service Electric & Gas Co., the state’s largest power supplier, is nearing completion of a program to mount 175,000 solar panels on utility poles along highways and residential streets. Those involved with the $200 million project say it’s the largest installation of its type in the world.

The last of the 3-by-5-foot solar panels—which weigh about 25 pounds and are mounted on angles part-way up the poles to maximize exposure to the sun—is scheduled to be installed in early April. The panels were going up at a rate of 300 a day until Sandy interrupted the process. Some 120 solar poles were damaged by the storm, according to utility spokesman Michael Jennings.

The combined energy generated by the panels, 40 megawatts, would be able to power more than 6,000 homes, according to the utility.

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Sun Power, Pole by Pole

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