State Grant Delivers $3.2 Million To Cambria County Wind Farm

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

November 7, 2011 | 5:41 PM

Scott Detrow / StateImpact Pennsylvania

A Cambria County wind turbine

The PA Independent has the details on the latest state grant to an alternative energy project: a $3.2 million allocation to a Cambria County wind farm being developed by OwnEnergy.

HARRISBURG — Environmental groups and public officials say a state grant for a wind farm will bring economic growth and promote the energy industry, but a conservative economic group says the grant helps businesses that are “tax eaters.”

The Patton Wind Farm in Cambria County recently received a $3.2 million grant from the state taxpayer-funded Renewable Energy Program to purchase and install 15 new wind turbines in Elder, West Carroll and East Carroll townships

However, the state’s contribution is a fraction of the cost for the project, which is expected to create only three jobs. The Patton Wind Farm is a $57.1 million project that also is receiving $39 million from private money and $15 million from the federal government.

The wind turbines are expected to produce 94.6 million kilowatt-hours of energy annually, according to the state Department of Community and Economic Development, or DCED, which encourages economic growth. The average annual electrical energy consumption of a household in the United States is 8,900 kilowatt-hours.