In Charleston Township, Michigan, not far from Kalamazoo, Sam and Connor Field and their company partner, Richard Schmitt, formed a business, Kalamazoo Solar, to install a ground-mounted solar array comprised of 756 solar panels delivering 150 kilowatts of electricity that are expected to turn into the largest solar farm in the state.
The size is notable, but not spectacular, in national terms. In purely neighborhood terms, it will be a giant. The University of Michigan has 30 kilowatts Oakland University has 10 Aquinas College has 10 the City of Ann Arbor has a solar fountain the Urban Choices demo house has two Cityside Middle School in Zeeland has 1 Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park has 11 Pictured Rocks Lakeshore has 2. A number of installations are residential. The state has a total of 734 kilowatts installed.
But perhaps the most remarkable factor about Kalamazoo’s solar field array is the truth that the partners cut, drilled and welded 38,000 pounds of steel and 12,000 pounds of rerod themselves to create the 126 racks required in order to save funds.
Completion is scheduled for December 1, and for the Fields it is the culmination of a dream, and a belief that the most crucial issue facing America is energy independence combined with lowering the greenhouse gases emitted by conventional energy generation.
Connor, the younger Field, is an economics significant at the University of Michigan. Sam is a lawyer. Schmitt owns the land on which the solar array is being assembled, and if it were not for the feed-in tariff (FiT) offered by regional utility Buyers Energy, the idea may possibly not have gotten off the ground, figuratively speaking.
The Michigan FiT, modeled on German legislation, is still in the experimental phase, with Consumers and DTE, yet another Michigan utility, largely hopeful the initiative will, if passed, provide much more renewable energy to meet the state’s 10-percent by 2015 renewable portfolio common, or RPS. The initiative is becoming pushed by Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, a number of state legislators, and ReEnergize Michigan, a new coalition of citizen groups, unions, churches, and environmental organizations. Opposition for FiTs is coming from the Michigan Electric Cooperative Association, a trade association representing Michigan electric co-ops that wants to create a 600-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Rogers.
The Kalamazoo solar field received approval in August from the Charleston Township board of trustees, and will, when completed, be connected to Consumer’s Energy grid. Then, the corporation officers program to invite Granholm to the commissioning ceremony.
Three guys and a bunch of tools to generate the largest solar energy installation in Michigan seems like a modern day Cinderella story, but 1 most likely to be repeated across the nation as a lot more and much more people understand the rewards of clean, renewable solar energy.