Vaughn Woodruff states in his recent column that our power needs might be better served and even less costly in the long run if we  depended on our electricity being supplied by local solar sources rather than by huge centrally located internationally owned power plants (“Time for Maine, US to take their ‘sunshot’,” Oct. 15). I’d like to be a bit more specific.

In Madison, we have a local solar array on 40 acres of land that supplies half of our town’s electrical needs. Those 40 acres are only one one-thousandth of the 35,000 acres of land available in Madison. Another one one-thousandths of land devoted to solar energy and a storage system would supply the entire town with all the power it would need. The existing grid system would allow electricity to be wheeled to larger communities in this state where land is more at a premium.

This would save all Maine residents a few dollars and reduce our carbon footprint. All we have to do is redirect the funds we are putting into the current archaic fossil-fuel based power production into providing every town with the means to construct and maintain solar energy farms.

 

Peter P. Sirois

Madison