Punxsy council approves construction for solar panel farm

PUNXSUTAWNEY — Punxsutawney Borough Council voted to approve the $10 million Option B for the long-awaited solar panel farm to be constructed at the Punxsutawney Borough Police Department firing range in Young Township at Monday’s council meeting.

Dr. William Spencer, borough manager, outlined the two options for the solar farm project.

“Council has been interested in a solar farm project for quite awhile, which predates me,” Spencer said. “The assessment was done and if you just keep to the numbers, $300,000 a year for 25 years, you’re looking at $7.5 million dollar project.”

He said council wanted him to come up with a solar farm project that would create enough funding to compensate for the energy use, but it would also pay for itself.

“EIS, the original company that was going to construct the project, presented two different options,” Spencer said. “They came up with two proposals, from Raymond James Bond Company, the largest bond company in the commonwealth,  to borrow $7.5 million to cover the build of the farm that will give you a 3 megawatt farm and then you get the federal tax credit at approximately 40 percent and you get $2.4 million back.”

Spencer said that if energy costs do not rise the borough is projected to make $19 million over the course of the project.

“Option B is to take out a little more money to do other capital projects, whatever you may want, streetscape, Harmon Field, whatever,” he said. “Take out a little bit more money and then all of the same parameters are there, you get most of your money up front, and in either case, the projections are that the borough will not pay anything on it. The farm will be fully self-sustaining, it will pay for itself, you’ll make it back over the period of the project and you don’t pay anything out.”