At the Monday borough council meeting of the whole, a councillor observed that Columbia might look at having five wind turbines constructed to save on the borough’s electricity charges.

The councillor contended that five turbines would provide enough power for every home in the borough and have enough left over to sell to the grid.

Wind Energy America, a publicly traded energy company, says “an average one megawatt wind turbine will produce enough energy for the annual needs of 350 average households. The amount of energy produced by a turbine varies depending on several factors, namely the size and reliability of the turbine, and the speed that the wind is blowing. These factors together produce the turbine’s capacity. Typically modern turbines range in size from 660 kilowatts to over 3 megawatts of capacity. They are placed in fairly windy locations with minimum wind speeds in the range of six meters per second (around 13 miles per hour). Wind turbines generally run at 30 to 40 percent capacity, so a 1 MW turbine could produce around 3 million KWh of electricity in a year.”

Ensuing discussion among the council, the mayor and the borough manager led to further conversation about other possible renewable energy sources such as solar panels that might be located at the “boro farm.”

Someone mentioned there was a “solar farm in Colerain Township or somewhere.”

Pennsylvania’s largest solar farm just opened late last year in East Drumore Township. The 20 million project reportedly “is expected to generate enough electricity to serve 950 homes annually,” according to this October 2012 MySolancoNews article.

An earlier WGAL-TV article and included at the GroSolar Website stated, “The cost of solar energy is going down, so it’s possible more energy farms may be constructed in the future.  The cost is less than a $1 a watt. The solar units are 290-watt modules, so the panels produce roughly between $270 to $290 worth of electricity.  Once the solar farm goes online in a few weeks, it will feed enough power into the electric grid to light up close to 1,000 homes.”