Posted on 08/03/2009 7:56:59 AM PDT by Born Conservative
LONG POND - Standing in an open field with rain coming down Friday afternoon, Dr. Joseph Mattioli talked about the sun.
Across the street at Pocono Raceway, qualifying for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race was being washed out. But Dr. Mattioli, CEO of the raceway, announced plans and broke ground on the world's largest solar energy project at a sports facility.
"It's something unique; no other race track or sporting venue has one," Dr. Mattioli said. "It's good for Monroe County and something good for everybody."
The solar farm will power the track's energy needs as well as support the grid.
The main reason behind the decision to go green was financial, raceway President Brandon Igdalsky said. Deregulation in January would have raised the track's electricity bill between 35 and 40 percent, he said.
"As you can imagine, we use a lot of electricity," said Mr. Igdalsky, who is also Dr. Mattioli's grandson. "So we started looking at different ways that we could cut costs. One thing led to another, and we kept coming back to solar."
Approximately 40,000 photovoltaic panels will be installed on 25 acres of land across from the track and generate three megawatts of power. Since only one megawatt will be needed to power the track, Pocono plans to sell the other two. One megawatt can power between 800 and 2,000 homes, depending on the amount of sunlight on a given day.
Pocono will also receive a 30 percent tax credit as part of the federal stimulus package.
"Electricity is not going to get cheaper, ever," Dr. Mattioli said. "So it's going to be a money-making thing. And these things are supposed to last for 40 years, so we think we've got a good investment. It'll be a good legacy for my children and my grandchildren."
The $17.75 million project has already been paid for in cash, Dr. Mattioli said, and should be ready and operating by May or June.
Pocono has hired enXco, a French-based company established in 1987 that designs, develops and builds renewable energy projects such as wind energy and solar energy.
I don’t have a problem with this if its what they want to do and they use their own money to do so. I’m still torn on the tax break for doing it though.
to bad the race is so boring.
Yes, the tax break is the real policy question. I think that to the extent that it’s FEDERAL tax breaks (there are state level subsidies, too) the Feds should try to see that these things are put in the parts of the country that receive the greatest amount of solar radiation, year round, namely the Southwest including Southern California. At least then the payback would be improved. The Poconos are cloudy from November to April, and at that northern latitude, get poorly angled sunlight.
25 more acres of prime deer hunting gone.
Michigan International Speedway is planting trees around the track and on the grounds. So far no solar that I’m aware of. Having walked across that Michigan desert more than a few times, I can honestly say some trees would be awesome.
I don’t think these projects ever pay off in the long run. Without the tax break I’ll bet they never would have done it — especially in a place like the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania where “overcast” is the normal weather condition for most of the year.
But you know, it shouldn't be that way.
Electricity is not oil, i.e. a finite resource. When we learned how to harness nuclear power there was much speculation and ballyhoo about dirt cheap electricity in the future. Instead, we have allowed the Greens to dictate our energy policy to us. Also, the Sun is a never ending source of daily energy and we only use a very small portion of it. You'd think, as we built more and more things to harness more and more of its energy it would have to become more abundant and thus cheaper.
So their not really earth friendly citizens but evil capitalist pig dogs.[/sarc]
Question, do you get solar power when it rains or snows?
Great/sarc...they have lousy parking there already - now there will be less lousy parking.
Actually, any unused electricity that they produce is bought by the electric company.
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