Coatesville Solar Panel Energy Initiative – Exton Pennsylvania
Press Release – Exton, PA Dec. 31, 2014
When the power grid that currently feeds electricity to our hospitals, police stations, homes or electric cars goes down, in a natural disaster like Hurricane Sandy, it will be the microgrids that will come on and will power us back up.
“Think of it like we think of ‘Locally-grown produce,’ ” says Bob Keares, of Keares Electric, developer of the Coatesville Solar Initiative (CSI). “When the Coatesville Solar Farm goes live, it will, by regulation, become a microgrid for part of the Coatesville area. That’s comparable to locally grown apples, tomatoes and corn. If the container ships that deliver fresh fruit and vegetables to us from across the globe could not make it into port due to a natural or man-made disaster (and thus to our supermarkets), our own “locally grown” products could then sustain us. It’s the same way with the solar farm. We are literally harvesting electricity, on a local basis.”
The benefit (and strength) of the solar farm is not only illustrated in the production of total renewable energy for the Coatesville Area High School (CASH). It will also be demonstrated in a disaster, for example, such as last week’s snowstorm in Buffalo, where power was cut off to municipalities, thus crippling much-needed services. With a microgrid in place, power (reserved in batteries) will be available for local use. The CSI microgrid will be on call 365 days a year, and 24 hours a day, ready with the clean, renewable power the solar farm produces.
David Ferris, of Forbes Magazine (July, 31, 2013) explains it in this way, “A microgrid is a lot more than just backup power… It is a system that blends power from the utilities with local power whether there is an outage or not. Few large-scale examples of microgrids yet exist, but here is what one is intended to do. It reduces emissions by scaling down the power arriving from faraway, carbon-spewing coal or natural-gas plants, while adding in local sources like fuel cells, biomass plants, and solar and wind power installations. It prioritizes power needs so that during a blackout, the most crucial elements stay on (like data centers) while the less important ones (like coat closets) are let go. It gives a user some control over the power supply instead of just begging to the power company. And it does all this autonomously and without a flicker in the lights.”
In addition to serving as a microgrid, the Coatesville Solar Initiative (CSI) will provide 100% of the energy needs for the Coatesville Area Main Campus (CAMC) for the next 25 years. CSI will construct two (2) 2.4 MW farms producing approximately 6.3 plus million KwHs of power covering 26 acres of the 48-acre parcel located adjacent to the school. It is estimated CASD by the year 2039 will have saved a total of $3.0 to $6.0 million dollars in energy costs. CAMC includes the High School, its athletic facility and outdoor lighting.
CSI will also be providing the CASD with an electric vehicle and three electric vehicle-charging stations to power it, to be used by staff or students that may want to bring their electric vehicle to work and or school. Plus, included in the CSI package is LED lighting at the high school on main campus, as well as LED lighting on poles at Rainbow Elementary. Three solar-education kiosks will be developed, which can be moved from school to school. These savings (in excess of $365,000.00) are all “no cost benefits” to the school district. The statement of sustainability and energy conservation are being made, and will help benefit students of all ages including staff and administration from all areas of studies.
Not to mention, the geographic region of Coatesville in a power outage emergency.
For information on this project, kindly contact the Coatesville Solar Initiative at Keares Electrical Contracting at 610-363-8160 or visit
http://www.gogreencsi.com/
Release Prepared and submitted by: For more information on this release, kindly contact Melinda Williams at The Williams Group, 610-518-4888 or visit www.thewilliamsgroup.info
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