The Green Energy Ohio Tour, one of the largest of its kind in the nation, drew Ohio residents to 51 counties in the state over the weekend, promoting the use of renewable energy.
The tour, Ohio’s biggest ever, featured 261 sites, which created 750 jobs and retained 1,146 in Ohio this year, according to a Green Energy Ohio news release.
The sites opened their doors to participate in the tour, promoting the use of renewable power sources in an effort to educate tour-goers on the benefits of clean energy.
Eight sites fell into a 15-mile radius of the City of Athens, including the Integrated Services of Appalachian Ohio, the Athens Community Center and the Village Bakery and Café. Participating private residencies included Cochran Duff and Hamilton Palmer as well as the Wilson, Yandrich and Burns families.
Jeff and Sherri Wilson, 69 S. Shannon St., broke ground on their deep energy retrofit in September of 2007. A deep energy retrofit involves replacing almost every aspect of a home in order to get as close as possible to net-zero energy consumption.
Improvements made on the Wilson home include an exterior curtain wall with two and a half inches of spray foam insulation, all new windows and doors, garage replacement and addition, new heating ventilation and air conditioning, new appliances and lighting and a 4 kilowatt photovoltaic solar array.
“We had construction crews here for about 10 weeks after we broke ground and they did a lot of the large scale work,” said Jeff. “We have done the rest ourselves, and are retrofitting the basement now … we should be done in anywhere from three to five months.”
The total cost of the retrofit was about $27,500 and the building materials used were renewable, he said, adding the roofing is made from 80 percent recycled rubber, and the wood siding was made of small diameter rapidly regenerating trees.
In terms of local businesses and facilities, the Athens Community Center completed a solar carport in November of last year that has generated over 232,666 kilowatt-hours.
The carport was installed at no cost to the city as SolarVision, the firm that developed the system, owns it. The city purchases the electricity created from the array at a discounted price via a power purchase agreement, according to a 2010 news release.
In addition, the Village Bakery and Café, 268 E. State St., has been producing its own green energy for just over a year now.
“We all have to do our part to deal with energy issues in the country and the community. We are just doing ours,” said bakery manager and co-owner Bob O’Neil. “We started with sustainable food processes in our attempt to go green. Going solar was the perfect next step.”
Since the restaurant needs so much electricity to power its refrigeration units, kitchen and lighting, the solar arrays only account for about 20 percent of the restaurants needs.
“That’s still 20 percent of coal or other dirty energies that doesn’t need to be produced,” O’Neil said.
sm366909@ohiou.edu
