Cementing UT’s solar power reputation
I think Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland best summed up UT’s continuing efforts to transform the region into a high-tech alternative energy industry hub with these words taken from the Blade’s story:
The governor said he had been touring the state, viewing high-tech facilities, and talking about renewable energy, “and no part of Ohio is more exciting to visit” than UT.
UT’s incubator facilities are working with local companies that collectively span the spectrum of the solar power industry. Some, like Xunlight, create the panels and do the research to discover how to most efficiently capture the suns rays. Other companies focus on installation, others on logistics.
One company UT is working with is developing a layer to help use the power of sunlight to scatter dust particles and keep the panels clean without needing to wash them (which comes in handy in places like the desert, where we put many, many solar panels).
UT is hiring a new dean to lead the newly created School of Solar and Advanced Renewable Energy which will help further focus all of the alternative energy research and efforts coming out of a number of different UT colleges.
All these companies we’re working with, combined with the researchers investigating solar and wind and bio-fuels, will have the opportunity to test and display their advances at the new Scott Park Campus of Energy and Innovation.
And the result of all this learning will be companies putting it into practice, creating jobs in a high-growth, high-tech industry. Also interesting from the Blade – 60 percent of solar cell production in the United States is within 60 miles of Toledo, Ohio.
The critical mass has been forming for some time as Toledo works toward becoming the solar-power version of a Silicon Valley in California or a Research Triangle in North Carolina.
Jon Strunk is UT’s media relations manager, a graduate of UT’s College of Arts and Sciences, a student in its College of Business Administration and a man constantly wary of his cell phone ringing. With the media having only so much space and so much time to tell a story, Jon has reserved this space on the World Wide Web to highlight, analyze, complain, lobby, beg, apologize and comment on media coverage of UT, higher education and, from time to time, his half-hearted quest to replace his ’96 Mercury Sable.