The Phoenix Sun

Ohio's new Wyandot Solar Farm

The second largest utility-scale solar plant east of the Mississippi River opened Thursday and is now generating enough electricity to power an estimated 1,500 homes in north-central Ohio. The 12MW Wyandot Solar Farm uses 160,000 thin-film solar panels set on 84-acres of former farmland.

The panels were produced by First Solar at its Perrysburg, Ohio, manufacturing plant, which was recently expanded.

The thin-film technology is cheaper to produce than silicon-crystal based photovoltaic panels, but is less efficient at converting sunlight into electricity. PSEG Solar Source, the Newark, NJ-based company that owns the solar plant, decided the trade-off was worthwhile, according to spokesman, Curt Judy.

Location of new Ohio power plant

“The thin-film technology is also very well suited at capturing lower radiance or low sunlight which we tend to see in the winter months,” Judy told local television station NBC channel 4 out of Columbus.

Ohio’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) requires utilities to obtain a minimum of 12.5 percent of electrical generation from renewable sources, including solar, by 2025.

Columbus, Ohio (photo by Codydean via Flickr)

Well, hello, Columbus. (Click here if you’re not a Philip Roth fan.)

Some people were surprised when Columbus, Ohio, appeared on the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) list of the top twenty-two energy “Smarter Cities,” sharing the spotlight with towns better known for their deep green glow. Places like Portland, Seattle, Boston and San Francisco.

One person who was not surprised was Michael Coleman, mayor of the city that in the 1990s still had the reputation as being just another bleak hole in the Midwestern Rust Belt. Coleman has led efforts to make Columbus a model of energy efficiency, one of the main priorities under a program called “Get Green Columbus.”

The program was already well underway when it received a huge boost from $7.4 million in federal stimulus funds. More than a score of city fire stations and several other city buildings are getting energy efficiency make overs. Businesses and homes are given incentives to lower energy consumption.

Well before the infusion of cash from Washington, Columbus had already completed its first energy efficient affordable housing, called, fittingly, Greenview Estates. The city also developed a recycling program, an initiative clean up air pollution and an infrastructure overhaul to ensure that residents had clean, safe water.

Energy efficiency has been at the core of the Columbus revitalization, however, which is why the NRDC included it as one of the 22 “Smarter Cities” for 2010.

The other cities, grouped by size are -

Large:

Austin, TX

Boston, MA

Chicago, IL

Columbus, Ohio

Dallas, TX

El Paso, TX

Long Beach, CA

New York, NY

Oakland, CA

Portland, OR

San Francisco, CA

Seattle, WA

Medium:

Berkeley, CA

Fort Collins, CO

Huntington Beach, CA

Reno, CA

Springfield, IL

Santa Clarita, CA

Small:

Beaverton, OR

Denton, TX

Dubuque, IA

Santa Cruz, CA

To lean more about how the NRDC picked these cities from among 655 considered, visit the Smarter Cities site.