Sun Powered Jobs

In 2010 Neighborhood  Solutions Inc. (NSI) established an urban farming project, The Vineyards of Chateau Hough is a ¾ acre inner-city vineyard in Cleveland that was built primarily utilizing the labor of men from a nearby halfway house. A BioCellar, (an underground growing environment) was completed in 2014 that allows for year-round propagation of a variety of cash crops, plants and aquaponics. 

With the need to find alternative energy solutions,   NSI wants to develop an urban solar farm, an alternative energy sources for this environment. The Solar Farm, a zero emissions source will be on E. 66th Street, just North of Hough Ave., the corridor that links the Cleveland Botanical Garden Green Corps, Midtown Learning Farm on Chester, the Vineyards and BioCellar of Chateau Hough, and the Historic League Park Baseball Field and Museum on Lexington (all lining 66th Street).

The 2400 sq. ft. solar farm is designed to generate  48KWh per day(kilowatt-hour ), 1440KWh per month and 17.2 MWh per year.   The project will interconnect and operate in parallel with a utility grid to benefit the community-at-large providing power for an all electric house that averages 1440kWh per month or 4 natural gas heated houses using less than 400kWh per month and serve as passive income for this Urban Agriculture Zone  (UAZ).

Finalize land acquisition and arrangements with Cleveland Public Power

Reconfirm donated materials

Assign staff  and prep site

Install 60 large ground-mounted 200 PV panels in 3-5 weeks

Hough exemplifies many of the socio-economic issues  in Cleveland which has been listed among the 12 poorest cities since 2000. In 2009, Cleveland ranked 2nd poorest of all major cities.  In 2010, the poverty rates in Hough was 46.1%.  This neighborhood is predominately African American, has low educational attainment levels, and a significant number of households in that spend more than 30% of their income on housing.  Additionally, a significant number of households do not have a car available (42.8%). Ohio has the seventh largest prison population in the United States. According to the Urban Institute, of the offenders from Cuyahoga County, 79% will be released to Cleveland, with a large number going to the Hough neighborhood (Visher and Courtney 2007).  This neighborhoods has a high rate of poverty, unemployment, and crime.  These factors in addition to the need to repurpose land makes it an environment in need of many resources.