{"id":2091,"date":"2015-12-27T13:34:25","date_gmt":"2015-12-27T18:34:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=2091"},"modified":"2015-12-27T14:21:53","modified_gmt":"2015-12-27T19:21:53","slug":"berkeley-springs-is-the-center-of-the-west-virginia-solar-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=2091","title":{"rendered":"Berkeley Springs the Center of the West Virginia Solar Universe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Berkeley Springs and Morgan County are the center of the West Virginia solar universe.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That\u2019s because Mountain View Solar is based here.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rUYyUU3Yfto\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Mountain View Solar CEO Mike McKechnie estimates that about fifty homes in Morgan County have solar panels. That\u2019s more per capita than any other county in the Mid-Atlantic region.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt\u2019s the highest density of solar panels per capita not just in West Virginia, but in the mid-Atlantic states,\u201d McKechnie told This Week in Morgan County with Russell Mokhiber. \u201cWe don\u2019t have a huge population and we have large number of people who have adopted solar energy, much higher than the norm in most places.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Of those fifty, how many have dropped their utility bills to close to zero dollars?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Close to thirty, McKechnie says.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This despite the fact that West Virginia is lagging behind neighboring states like Maryland in promoting solar energy. McKechnie says that Maryland has tens of thousands of solar industry workers, while West Virginia has fewer than 100 workers &#8212; many of them working for Mountain View Solar.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIf you take people who are unemployed or underemployed and you give them a new skill set, that\u2019s popular thing for you do when people are unemployed, and you give them the opportunity to work, they will work,\u201d McKechnie says. \u201cBut you have to give them the opportunity. If you don\u2019t have the space to grow in the solar industry, the training is not going to do any good. You\u2019ll train the folks and they\u2019ll go to Maryland, Ohio, Washington, D.C., the Carolinas, all the states around us. In West Virginia and Virginia there isn\u2019t a good climate for it. So there\u2019s not that many jobs.\u201d<\/span\n\nWhen it comes to solar development, neighboring Maryland puts West Virginia to shame, McKechnie says.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cMaryland is one of the top ten best states in the nation for solar, three or four years in a row now because they have excellent leadership from the governor and the state legislature,\u201d McKechnie says. \u201cThey have some 40,000 employees working in solar. West Virginia has less than 100. We have 20 of those people here in Berkeley Springs. Our company is about 20 people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Berkeley Springs and Morgan County are the center of the West Virginia solar universe. That\u2019s because Mountain View Solar is based here. Mountain View Solar CEO Mike McKechnie estimates that about fifty homes in Morgan County have solar panels. That\u2019s &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=2091\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2091"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2103,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2091\/revisions\/2103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}