Pittsburgh Looking to Boost Solar Power Use

Pittsburgh may be the next center of solar power in the U.S. Yes, that Pittsburgh.

On Monday Mayor Luke Ravenstahl held a day-long seminar with planning and development types on the potential for solar power in the Steel City. The mayor said city government will install a solar hot water heating system, a first for the city, at a to-be-determined firehouse.

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City government will take a closer look at solar power to see what problems and promise there may be in Western Pennsylvania for the technology. The government is currently working with Sandia National Laboratory to examine how to bring solar to public buildings and lower the obstacles to putting solar power on private property.

When you consider that Pittsburgh was chosen as the setting for the cold, snowy, gray parts of the screen adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic The Road, it may not be the first city that springs to mind for having the potential to use a lot of solar power.

However, the city was named one of 25 “Solar America Cities” in 2007 by the U.S. Department of Energy, a designation that gave it access to $200,000 in grants for solar projects. And a DOE official at Monday’s event noted that Germany and other European countries are now lauded for their solar power installations, and Pittsburgh gets more sun than many of those locales.

After all, if folks in Antarctica and Minnesota can find ways to use solar, why not Pittsburgh?

Photo credit: jmd41280 on Flickr, via a Creative Commons license.

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