Salt Lake County pitches sweeping solar initiative (Utah)

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http://www.sltrib.com/ci_11289003

Salt Lake County is all about sunshine for lighting libraries, juicing the jail and even powering Salt Palace conventions.

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But County Mayor Peter Corroon unveiled plans Monday to move forward anyway with the state's largest solar-power initiative and to let private enterprise pick up the tab.

"It's really a way to invest in solar panels with little or no cost and conserve energy," explained Corroon at a news conference staged in front of Clark Planetarium's solar-power exhibit.

Here's the strategy: The county would bid out the rooftops of more than 50 government buildings to a solar-power provider, which would install the arrays at its own cost and then sell the electricity at a fixed rate back to the county.
If successful, the county could draw 25 percent to 30 percent of its energy from the sun at a cost that Chief Administrative Officer Doug Willmore described as equivalent to what the county pays now. And the county, he added, won't have to cough up an estimated $72 million for equipment and installation.

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