The Secretary of the United States Department of Energy, Steven Chu, had announced this week that 5 projects are going to be selected to receive $20.5 million between themselves from the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act which is meant to support with deployment of renewable energy projects based on the community such as wind, solar and biomass installations. Chu said, “Smaller, localized renewable systems of energy have a role in the comprehensive energy portfolio. These projects are supposed to help with the creation of jobs, expanding our economy of clean energy & helping us with cutting carbon pollution levels locally.”

The projects which have been selected by the D.O.E. are going to be leveraged with $167 million worth of funding from local governments & private industry’s. They estimate these projects to provide sufficient electricity for close to 10,700 houses. Among the projects which have been selected are:

1. A city in Vermont, Montpelier plans to make use of $8 million from the D.O.E. for installing a 41 MMBtu heat & power district electricity system which is fueled by local sources of renewable & sustainably harvested chips of wood. This system is meant to give heating to city owned schools, Vermont Capitol Complex and about 156 buildings from the downtown area which give a grand total of 176 buildings & 1.8 mollion sq. feet served.

2. The Potawatomi Tribe of Forest County, Wisconsin wishes to install a 1.25 MW heat & power facility powered by biomass which is supposed to provide cooling, heating & electricity, 3 dual axis 2.88 kW solar PV panels, 3 100 kW wind turbines and one 150 kW biogas digester & generation facility. All of these are to be placed in the Governmental Center with the help of $2.5 million from the D.O.E.

3. SMUD got $5 million from the D.O.E. for making the 1st every solar highway of the state which is going to feature 300 kW concentrating PV & 400 & 800 kW flat plate PV spread across 2 miles on the highway. They are also going to be installing a large scale codigestion process with fats, oil & grease & liquid food waste processing with sewage to help prodiuce biogas with an estimated power recovery close to 1-3 MW & also install 2 low NOx amaerobic digesters which are fed by a couple of dairy facilities which would produce 500 kW between heat & power & 600 kW through molten carbonate fuel cells.