Agenda - 09-18-2012 - 6b - Laserfiche WebLink

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76 Beth Trehos: One of the reasons that green energy like solar power is so attractive in this area is that there are state law requirements that the energy companies contract with providers, so there is an incentive for a company that would buy Duke Power to continue on. Also, we are actively involved in the negotiations of a contract which would bind that. Lance Williams: Hi, my name is Lance Williams, I'm in site development for Strata Solar. We have a regulated power industry. There are regulations that require power companies to buy power. We sell our power at a competitive rate of other sources of power. This model is to sign a power purchase agreement for a 15-year term. The construction process, I'll just tell you a little bit about that. We look for sites that don't have more than a 7% grade. So basically, we come into the site and we install fence posts. They go six to ten feet in the ground. Then we attach the solar panels. Then the wires run together and we attach them into the power grid. So it is a very nonintrusive piece of the land. We're not normally reshaping the way that the work goes off the property. Many people find this a very compatible use to rural agricultural land. As mentioned before, they don't create a lot of noise. There is not a lot of traffic. If there is a problem with the array, then we send someone to check it out, so the amount of traffic we're creating is less than what would be created for a single house. It is encouraged by the Comprehensive Plan and it is also considered a public good by both the state and the federal government. This site creates enough energy for about 748 houses. This equates to about the same as 2.8 million miles of vehicular traffic the amount of savings in greenhouse emissions that is created by one solar panel. Construction takes about 14 weeks, so, we're not intrusive to neighbors other than during the construction period. Once again, we're not causing a large increase in cost to the County. Thank you very much. We look forward to building a solar farm in Orange County. Since Orange County is our home, we have strong ties to the site and I think this use fits very well into the surrounding community. Commissioner Jacobs: What is the life of one of these panels? Lance Williams: Well, we haven't quite lived that long yet. The best guess is 50 to 60 years. At the end of 25 years, the panel is at 85% capacity. The panels do not have moving parts, they are not trackers, so they don't follow the sun. So it is a fairly old technology adopted in the 70's, with silicone as the base material, which is some glass and basically dirt, so there's not a whole lot there that could go wrong. The upkeep for one of these farms is small in comparison to other utility projects. Pete Hollenbeck: Do I understand this correctly that you're saying it is roughly a 6.3 megawatts setup. Lance Williams: Yes, 6.38 megawatts is DC. Most people speak in terms of AC. This is 5 megawatts AC. Pete Hollenbeck: And there are 960 individual solar panels. That would mean about 6.8 kilowatts per panel? Is that clusters of panels? Lance Williams: An array is made up of individual panels. While there may be 960 arrays there are somewhere between 26,000 and 27,000 panels. The panels are typically between 235-240 watts.