{"id":1820,"date":"2011-06-30T11:40:59","date_gmt":"2011-06-30T15:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/06\/sumter-county-may-go-solar-wheres-lowndes-county.html"},"modified":"2011-06-30T11:40:59","modified_gmt":"2011-06-30T15:40:59","slug":"sumter-county-may-go-solar-wheres-lowndes-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/06\/sumter-county-may-go-solar-wheres-lowndes-county.html","title":{"rendered":"Sumter County may go solar: where’s Lowndes County?"},"content":{"rendered":"Sumter County gets it about solar power, independence and jobs.\nWhere’s Lowndes County?\n

\nSo how big is this\n\nNational Solar project that Sumter County may get?<\/a>\nSteve Leone wrote for Renewable Energy World,\n\nSeven Communities Waiting for the Sun in Southeastern U.S.<\/a>:\n

\n\n<\/a>\nThe project will be a network of 20 solar farms, each of which will\nspan 200 acres and generate 20 MW. It would be much larger than the 80\nMW solar power plant in Ontario, Canada, currently the world’s largest.\n<\/blockquote>\nThe finalists are:\n<\/a>\n
\n<\/a>\nThe communities selected by National Solar Power as finalists to become\nthe location of the development are Gadsden, Hardee, Osceola and Suwannee\ncounties in Florida, Sumter and Tatnall counties in Georgia and Guilford\nCounty in North Carolina.\n<\/blockquote>\nAnd Lowndes County isn’t even in the running.\nWhy not?\n\n\n
\nThe criteria for the site is the amount of undeveloped land, support from\nthe community and local businesses as well as a qualified workforce and\neconomic development.\n<\/blockquote>\nSee National Solar’s press release.<\/a>\n

\nWe’ve got plenty of land in Lowndes County, and we claim to be work-ready.\nThere is growing support from the community.\nBut where is Industrial Authority on this?\nThis National Solar project is much bigger than\nthe biomass plant VLCIA wasted more than\na hundred thousand of our tax dollars on:\n

\nNational Solar Power says its project could create 400 jobs during its\nfive-year construction phase and up to 120 additional permanent jobs. Once\nan agreement is in place, the company will begin construction plans,\nand the first phase could be completed within six months from the start\nof construction. It remains unclear how long it would take between a\nsite selection and the start of construction.\n

\nEach of the 20 farm segments represents a $70 million investment,\naccording to the company, and over the construction, it says it will be\na nearly $1.5 billion investment in one of the seven communities.\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n\n<\/a>\nThe Chamber of Commerce is starting to rev up.\nMaybe they’ll lead.\n

\n\n<\/a>\nOr maybe VLCIA will lead\n\nunder new management by Andrea Schruijer.<\/a>\n

\n\n<\/a>\nMaybe we’ll even hear\n\na mayor with vision<\/a>.\nOr maybe even a County Commission Chairman with vision.\n

-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sumter County gets it about solar power, independence and jobs. Where’s Lowndes County? So how big is this National Solar project that Sumter County may get? Steve Leone wrote for Renewable Energy World, Seven Communities Waiting for the Sun in Southeastern U.S.: The project will be a network of 20 solar farms, each of which […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,2,3714,21,23,24,3,178,332],"tags":[8736,8717,8701,8877,8713,8714,1957],"class_list":["post-1820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-government","category-national-solar","category-planning","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-transparency","category-vlcia","category-vlcoc","tag-activism","tag-community","tag-georgia","tag-national-solar","tag-renewable-energy","tag-solar","tag-sumter-county"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-tm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1820\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}