NE Ohio winery begins to reap benefits from solar panels- Cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio – When winemakers go outside, they usually look down and check out the soil, vines and grapes. When Tony Debevc goes out, he looks up.
The Debonne Vineyards owner keeps a constant eye on the sun. Any farmer has to deal with Mother Nature, but Debevc has special reason to do so. In February, after two years of work, the Madison winery installed solar panels.
“This solar guy shows up on my door one day and says, ‘You’d be in a perfect place for solar panels, you’ve got all this open space. I hear wineries are doing it out west. You would be a good example.’ ”
Debevc mulled and researched it. He had some Covid money that came in, and he was pitched grant money. He also was told write-off possibilities would happen sooner rather than through amortization. And he talked to an Ohio turkey farmer familiar with solar panels.
“So I said, ‘OK, we’ll do it.’ ”
It took two years. He signed the contract in November 2022. A little more than a month ago, the panels were up and running in the winery located 45 miles east of downtown Cleveland.
Five rows of 200 panels, each about five feet by three feet, fill a section of the property. Panels are dark so they absorb heat and can melt snow naturally, plus they are angled so snow can slide off.
“They don’t need direct sunlight,” Debevc said. “They need light.”
To understand solar power you need a primer in two types of energy. Direct current and alternating current. Serbian-American Nikola Tesla invented AC. Thomas Edison invented DC.
For a while, back in the late 19th century, Tesla worked for Edison.
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