When it was announced in 2008 that Philadelphia would be selected as one of the country's 25
Solar America Cities, the mission was relatively straightforward. It involved the city and the
U.S. Department of Energy working together in an effort to "rapidly increase the use and integration of solar energy," according to the program's website.
Last month, the city took a major step towards that goal when it broke ground on its very first municipal-owned solar power plant, a project that was the result of an $850,000 grant from the Department of Energy. The solar photovoltaic system is currently under construction at the
Philadelphia Water Department's Southeast Water Pollution Control Plant, where it will be ground-mounted on a little more than an acre of formerly unused land. Its construction is expected to be complete sometime this spring.
According to Paul Kohl, the Philadelphia Water Department's Energy Champion, the plant will produce roughly 300,000 kilowatt hours of energy each year, which is enough to power somewhere between 28 and 30 homes in Southeastern Pennsylvania.
And what of the relatively small size of the plant?
"To give a very pedestrian answer," says Kohl, "the amount of money that we were willing to spend--and that the
Mayor's Office of Sustainability was willing to give us--was about the size of the site."
According to Kohl, the city does plan to continue moving forward with the installation of other solar plants at sites much larger than that of the Water Department's. Those installations, however, will be operated through what's known as a
Solar Power Purchase Agreement (SPPA) model, in which a developer would design, build and run a solar plant, and the city would then promise to purchase the plant's energy for a specified length of time, usually somewhere between 15 and 20 years.
Source: Paul Kohl, Philadelphia Water Department
Writer: Dan Eldridge