Owens Corning, the Fortune 500 buildings materials company, is probably best known for its pink fiberglass insulation. Now it’s got another claim to fame: the company’s Bethlehem, New York manufacturing plant, already the winner of a New York State Governor’s Award for pollution prevention, is, as of [recently], home to one of the largest industrial solar arrays in the Empire State.
The company had flipped the switch on the 2.7 megawatt installation [on October 15] at noon–just as sunshine broke through the clouds, as if on cue. The solar array was approximately 9,000 ground-mounted photovoltaic panels located on more than 9 acres, on a former cornfield close to the plant. The array demonstrates the benefits of pollution-free electricity, producing enough clean power from the sun to supply some 6% of the plant’s electricity needs.
It also demonstrates the benefits of Governor Cuomo’s NY-Sun Initiative, without which this solar array would not have come into being. The initiative is currently funded through 2015, but we hope that with one last push from the Governor, NY-Sun will live on as a 10-year, $150-million-a-year effort to finally make New York a solar leader.
Sunny states like California, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico are, of course, early leaders in installed solar capacity, but Northeastern states also have a high potential for solar power. Currently, the great state of New York lags behind New Jersey and Massachusetts in total solar power installed. However, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, New York is catching up, thanks to NY-Sun and is now #8 in the country for installed solar power, up from #13 at the beginning of 2013.
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