Swalley Irrigation District’s Ponderosa Hydro Plant Gets Stimulus Funds

Oregon canal piping projects win stimulus funds
From KTVZ.COM news sources – August 20, 2009

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced Thursday that the Bureau of Reclamation has identified two Challenge Grant projects in Central Oregon that will receive a $3.3 million share of $40 million coming to Oregon under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.  

Through the Challenge Grant Program’s Water Marketing and Efficiency Grants, Reclamation provides 50/50 cost share funding to states and irrigation and water districts for projects focused on water marketing, conservation and efficiency.  Projects are selected through a competitive process, based on their ability to meet the goal of improving sustainable water supplies in the western United States.  The projects include:

Main Canal Piping Project and Ponderosa Hydro plant, Swalley Irrigation District: $2,058,935 for this three stage/phase project that would complete piping of ¾ miles of canal, the design and construction of a 0.75 megawatt hydropower plant, and a solar telemetry project that would allow the District to use solar power for a system that monitors, measures and controls water.

PV Powered Looks to Double in Size

Future is sunny for PV Powered
With new investment, it’s ready for major growth
By Andrew Moore – The Bulletin – June 05, 2009

Thanks to the extension of a crucial government tax credit and a recent multimillion-dollar investment, Bend’s PV Powered is ramping up for growth that could double or triple the company’s size in the next two years and firmly cement Central Oregon as a center for renewable-energy technology, according to CEO Gregg Patterson.

The privately held company, which manufactures electrical devices called inverters that are a critical component of solar energy systems, has recently hired a handful of workers and is likely to hire as many as 10 more in the coming weeks to handle growing demand for its products, Patterson said.

The company laid off several workers in the fall but is now up to 55 employees, the majority of whom work out of a roughly 100,000-square-foot plant in northeast Bend that used to be a lumber products factory. The company currently uses only a small portion of the facility for its engineering and assembly work but expects to grow into the building as demand dictates.