On Wednesday, the Pennsylvania Energy Development Authority met and approved 27 grant awards totaling $12.4 million for Clean Alternative and Advanced Energy projects across the state.
Dana Aunkst, Acting Secretary of DEP, chairing the meeting, said that the DEP had received 184 applications for grants totaling $82 million in this round of funding. With so many applicants, he said that the technical screening committee and staff recommendations had to consider not only the standard criteria for the awards, but also geographic scoring, as well as considering projects that were the “best of class” in various categories.
Aunkst said the funding for this round came from three sources: $4.1 million from the Energy Development Fund, $8.034 million from Growing Greener II, and $259,694 from the Duquesne Light Settlement Fund.
Of the grants approved, 19 projects, totaling $9,680,340 were for advanced energy projects including six solar, three combined heat and power, five energy efficiency, and five biomass, biogas, hydropower and solar/thermal projects. Another $2,427,366 in grants were approved for five projects considered clean alternative energy, including manufacturing of fuel cell components, recycling electrolytes from batteries, expanding energy efficient window systems, solar-diesel hybrid lighting systems, and a new solar photovoltaic mounting system. A final group of three projects for advanced energy were approved for projects in the Duquesne Light service area totaling $278,465.00. Click here for a full list of approved projects.