Unemployed Coal Miners Install Solar Panels In West Virginia

[one...two...tree 2,762]

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — A group devoted to creating alternative energy jobs in Central Appalachia is building a first for West Virginia's southern coalfields region this week – a set of rooftop solar panels, assembled by unemployed and underemployed coal miners and contractors.

The 40- by 15-foot solar array going up on a doctor's office in Williamson is significant not for its size but for its location: It signals to an area long reliant on mining that there can be life beyond coal.

People were skeptical when the idea was first floated about a year ago, says Nick Getzen, spokesman for The Jobs Project, which is trying to create renewable energy job opportunities in West Virginia and Kentucky. In the southern coalfields, he says, people have only ever gotten electricity one way – from coal-fired power plants.

"This is the first sign for a lot of folks that this is real, and that it's real technology, and they can have it in their communities," Getzen says. "In no way are we against coal or trying to replace coal. There's still going to be coal mining here. This is just something else to help the economy."

The Jobs Project teamed up about a year ago with a solar energy company from the Eastern Panhandle, Mountain View Solar & Wind of Berkeley Springs, to develop a privately funded job-training program. The 12 trainees are earning $45 an hour for three days of work, while some local laborers are earning $10 an hour helping out.

Mountain View owner Mike McKechnie is also buying all his electrical supplies from a local business.

"We are not funded by any state organization. We're doing this as a business because we want to grow the solar infrastructure and industry," McKechnie says. "We're West Virginians, and we think it's important. There's a need here that's not being met."

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[Danno 1,228]

Now that is humiliating.

You used to produce energy for the nation now thanks to obama, not only don't you have a job but you must resort to lighting your house on batteries and LED lighting.

No doubt this fits right into the "FORWARD" theme.

Edited November 17, 2012 by Danno