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DP&L solar project is expected to be finished early next year

DP&L to build 7-acre solar power array in Washington Twp.

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By Steve Bennish, Staff Writer Updated 11:52 PM Wednesday, December 16, 2009

WASHINGTON TWP., Montgomery County — The region’s first sizeable solar array here will employ approximately 50 workers as it is being built, said Matt Owens, director of engineering for Ameridian Specialty Services, Solar & Renewable Energy Division, of Cincinnati, on Wednesday, Dec. 16.

When completed early next year, the $5 million Dayton Power & Light facility, across Yankee Street from Yankee Trace Golf Course, will have 9,000 solar panels and generate enough electricity to power nearly 150 homes.

Energy from the array will be fed into the utility’s grid and distributed to the utility’s consumers.

It will generate electricity even when the sun isn’t shining and the sky is cloudy, but it generates more on sunny days, DP&L spokeswoman Lesley Sprigg said. As the utility scales up the size of its solar renewable energy facilities, costs decline, she said.

“We’re at a good discount level, but we expect solar panel prices to continue to decline,” she said.

Nathan Beebe, 43, who lives in a neighborhood not far from the facility, said, “It sounds like a good idea to me. Overall, it’s a good thing.”

A visitor’s center to educate the public about solar power is planned as part of the installation, Sprigg said. Operation of the array is completely silent, so the only noise neighbors should hear, if any, will be during construction, she noted.

Solar arrays consist of many, interconnected solar cells, which in turn convert solar energy from the sun into electrical current.

DP&L’s solar facility is being built in partnership with a number of regional companies led by Ameridian Specialty Services, the utility said. Ameridian’s team includes Miller Valentine Commercial Construction of Dayton, Square D/Schneider Electric of West Chester, ESI Electric of Dayton, and Inovateus Solar of South Bend, Ind.

DP&L provides service to more than 500,000 retail customers in West Central Ohio. The utility, through its subsidiaries, owns and operates approximately 3,700 megawatts of generation capacity, of which 2,800 megawatts are low cost coal-fired units and 900 megawatts are natural gas and diesel peaking units.

The Yankee project isn’t the only utility-scale solar project under way in Ohio. Earlier this year it was announced that construction would begin for a solar project on 83 acres outside Upper Sandusky in Wyandot County.

It will use more than 165,000 panels built by First Solar Inc., which has a manufacturing plant in Perrysburg.

It should be completed next summer and be able to power about 1,500 homes. American Electric Power, which has a substation nearby, signed a 20-year power agreement with Wyandot Solar LLC, a subsidiary of Juwi Solar Inc., for output from the 10.08-megawatt facility.

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