The links between gas and solar energy keep piling up.
In addition to solar-powered purification technology for produced water, and landowners using their shale profits to buy solar arrays, there’s also the hundreds of solar panels scattered across the Marcellus Shale, powering well production.
Once a gas well is completed and all the major equipment and crews move to the next site, among the few things left on the surface are sensors that monitor flow and pressure and transmit that information wirelessly to the gas company’s command center. They’re powered by solar arrays because that’s often the only way to do it.
“On average a producing pad with four or five wells may use about 34 cents in electricity or less than 4 kilowatt hours per day (which is part of the reason a utility wouldn’t be in a hurry to get power to us),” said Matt Pitzarella, a spokesman for Range Resources.
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