The City of Corvallis is now running its airport on solar power. They’ve installed and switched on a new 110-thousand kilowatt hour solar array.
The $273 thousand dollar solar installation will produce enough energy to supply most of the city’s electricity use at the airport.
City of Corvallis spokesman Patrick Rollens says the city received a grant through Pacific Power’s Blue Power Program with additional funding. He says the panels were placed on a former industrial site. Rollens says this was a cost-effective way to work toward the city’s sustainability goals.
“Everything aligned with this project.” Rollens says, “We had the site in the form of this superfund project. We had the funding for the solar panels themselves and then we also had the bridge funding provided by Energy Trust of Oregon.”
The Corvallis Airport saw its busiest days around Monday’s solar eclipse. About 150 private planes landed there. The airport doesn’t have commercial passenger flights. A handful of large airports across the U.S. are powered by solar energy.
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