Minutes 05-27-2014 - Laserfiche WebLink

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higher voltage, to whatever the voltage is of that local power line. It is often a misconception that a large solar system like this would need special power lines brought in or would have to connect to really large power lines. These are connecting to common distribution power lines, you know like the size you would see running down any highway road, not a large road but just small wooden poles. These aren't the large metal poles. These are just small wooden poles that this power can feed into. This is an image of what it looks like putting all of these panels out in the field. This is from a different developer, but here in North Carolina. It is how these are commonly installed and how they are planned to be installed for this project. It is galvanized steel structures that are just driven into the ground, so there is no concrete in the ground. These are just pounded into the ground with machinery, and at the end of the life, they could be pulled out and the ground left just as it was beforehand. As you heard Mike say, there are no plans for grading of the site. These will just follow the natural contours of the site. As you can see here, you don't have to tear up the grass or vegetation that's there before these go in. You can just go right on top of that and just pound in these structures. And then you've got aluminum cross members that bolt on top of that and finally the panels holding to that aluminum framework. And you end up with a large array— a field of the solar panels, but still, lots of space. It's a little bit hard to tell from this angle, but there are still lots of space between those panels. So there is lots of room for rainwater that hits the panels and drains to the bottom side of the panel to absorb into the ground — right there, that vegetative ground right in front of the panel, because each area of panels is really fairly small. As I'm sure many people are aware, there have been lots of similar size solar farms going in in North Carolina the last couple of years. In fact they are becoming common here across the state. One of the largest systems was put in by Apple, a little bit further west in the state, in Maiden. This is a photo of it under construction, but it has now been operating for some time. This is quite a bit larger that the project proposed here, but just to give an example of another project in the state. So in conclusion, the solar system is safe and environmentally friendly for the area. There are no site emissions. Those panels are entirely encapsulated and there is no water intrusion. There is air intrusion. There is not water. There is no solution, no materials coming out into solution from the water, nothing released into the air, nothing released in to the soil. In fact, it is cleaner than not putting it there, because it is offsetting emissions from other plants. About half of the state's power electricity, power generation comes from coal and natural gas, which does have harmful local emissions. So this is directly offsetting those emissions from a nearby power plant, and we have seen widespread support of solar by many environmental organizations demonstrating the positive environmental aspects of the systems. A couple of local examples— EPA building in RTP has repeatedly put on new rooftop solar systems, showing there the lack of concern for the panels causing any trouble for their workers in their own buildings. They have put in systems in 2002, 2010, and 2011. They just kept adding, more systems to the top of their own buildings. These technologies have been around for 50 years, this crystalline, silicone technology, so it's not anything there that is going to surprise us. There's lot of experience for many decades now, of these being implemented out in the world. Michael Fox: Tommy, just two - two quick questions. One, do these panels move in any way, or are they fixed? Tommy Cleveland: At this site they'll be fixed. There are designs that move, but these will be fixed.