The Southwestern PA Commission's Water Resource Center is hosting a series of educational webinars on solar energy development, green infrastructure and water quality impacts.

The webinars will be held from Noon to 1:00 p.m.--

-- March 16: Preparing Your Community for Solar Development: the SolSmart Program and Technical Assistance: Local governments have tremendous influence over the prospects for, and shape of, solar energy growth.

The solar industry is a leading source of American job creation and attracting solar investment in your community is a great way to promote economic development and new jobs.

Solar resources are inherently local and can benefit the community directly as energy sources. However, solar development - from the rooftop to the solar farm - presents both opportunity and risk to the community.

Many communities are poorly equipped to navigate the issues of local solar development.

The national SolSmart program (funded by the U.S. Department of Energy) offers free technical assistance to communities for navigating risks and capturing opportunities as the solar industry ramps up.

This workshop will describe the burgeoning market for solar energy and solar development, the components of ensuring your community is “solar-ready” to both capture benefits and minimize risks, and the solar-ready certification process and technical assistance opportunities. Water quality and watershed issues will be addressed.

Click Here to register.

-- April 20: Large-scale Solar Development: Water Quality Risk, or Green Infrastructure? The PV-SMaRT Project.  Solar energy is now the least expensive form of electric energy generation in the world. Consequently, the market for solar energy projects is surging, with large-scale projects being proposed in every state in the nation.

Large-scale Photovoltaic (PV) solar projects, in particular, present unique and uncertain risks and opportunities to water quality and watershed functions.

The U.S. Department of Energy-funded the Photovoltaic Stormwater Management Research and Testing (PV-SMaRT) project to evaluate water quality impacts of large-scale solar development.

The study will create solar-specific runoff coefficients that consider type of ground cover, soil type, hydrology, slope, and solar array design based on field testing across the nation and 3-D modeling.

The project will also engage permit jurisdictions (authorities having jurisdiction, AHJs), from local to federal, to disseminate the findings and identify permitting best practices to make permitting transparent and predictable and improve water quality outcomes in our nation’s surface waters.

One potential implication of the study is understanding the conditions under which conversion of agricultural or disturbed land to solar development with appropriate ground cover could meet green infrastructure goals of improving water quality outcomes within impaired watersheds.

Click Here to register.

-- May 26: Metrics That Matter: Evaluating Green Stormwater Infrastructure Performance. Green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) is being implemented with greater and greater frequency throughout the country in order to meet water quality goals, enhance our communities, improve

climate change resiliency, and even reduce costs.

It is considered an important tool for communities addressing source reduction, particularly under the recent municipal consent orders distributed to communities by the Allegheny County Health Department and PA Department of Environmental Protection.

But how do owners and/or operators know if the GSI is doing what it was designed to do?

During this session, stormwater program managers, governments, community organizations, and even design professionals will learn methods for assessing the effectiveness of GSI and the complexities and compromises that should be considered when performing an assessment of installed GSI practices.

To that end, this presentation will explore the “metrics that matter” for every stage of a GSI project, from the initial site planning to design methodologies to construction phase evaluations and ultimately to post-construction performance monitoring.

The goal is to provide municipal and design communities with a practical framework of the available and emerging resources and tools necessary to deliver GSI projects that will pass the test of time, especially in an increasingly complex social environment and in a changing climate.

Click Here to register.

Visit the Water Resource Center's Event Calendar for additional upcoming webinars.

For more information on programs, initiatives, other educational resources and upcoming events, visit the Southwestern PA Commission's Water Resource Center website.

[Posted: March 7, 2022]

3/14/2022