Gadsden County residents have a bright future ahead of them. National Solar Power President James Scrivener updated the area’s chamber of commerce during a meeting Wednesday. He said thinks he can supply solar energy to the North Florida area by 2014. Residents of the county approved a tax incentive program, giving National Solar the go ahead to develop solar power harvesting sites. Scrivener said solar energy will reduce pollution, and create jobs for Gadsden County.
“So we will create 23 jobs per mega-watt, according to a paper published by the Florida Solar Energy Center last year, so our 20 mega-watt project will create 460 US jobs.” Scrivener said.
Prices for the energy have not been finalized, but David Gardner, Executive Director of the Gadsden County Chamber of Commerce, said residents won’t notice much of a difference.
“The business model that National Solar has, which are utility scale projects, are the same pricing models as existing power- they have done extensive research and they are using conventional technologies, to be competitive” Gardner said.
Construction is expected to begin on the company’s first harvesting site in 2013, and should be operational by 2014. It will produce power for about 32,000 homes.
