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The BARC Electric Cooperative is building and maintaining a community solar project for its member-owners.


ference Center in downtown Staunton is offering guests tickets that are good for their choice of local craft beers and souvenir glasses. “For us, it’s an opportu-


Strickland


nity to expand our reach into other avenues,” says Damon Strickland, the historic hotel’s general manager. “It’s agritourism — grain to glass. There are a lot of folks who enjoy learning about the


industry from start to finish. And we truly enjoy supporting anything that is local and part of the valley.”


Bath County stave mill Meanwhile, a Scottish company is


tapping the region’s timber industry to produce another type of adult beverage, bourbon. Speyside Bourbon Cooperage chose


Bath County for a new stave mill. It will supply American white oak staves used to make bourbon barrels. The company is investing $5 million to create a production facility in an industrial park in Millboro, creating 30 jobs. The Distilled Spirits Council of the


United States reports that sales rose 4.1 percent to nearly $72 billion in 2015. Sales of U.S. whiskeys increased even faster, up 7.8 percent. The surge in demand for bourbon has led to a shortage of barrels, according to the Wall Street Journal. Darren Whitmer, Speyside’s general


manager, says the search for a stave mill location started more than a year ago. “Our goal all along was to locate the plant in the Shenandoah Valley region due to the avail- ability of white oak and the fact that the timber industry is strong there,” he says. Speyside currently operates two plants in Scotland and one in Kentucky. The


72 NOVEMBER 2016


company is a part of a larger cask-making operation based in France. Speyside Bour- bon Cooperage in Jackson, Ohio, was the company’s first plant dedicated solely to producing bourbon barrels. The project is the first economic devel-


opment project announcement for Bath since 2003. The company has agreed to get 80 percent of its timber from Virginia landowners. “It’s a huge win for them,” says Carrie


Chenery, executive director of the Shenan- doah Valley Partnership, a regional eco- nomic development group. “Bath was able to provide the natural resources and the workforce that Speyside was looking for.”


Community solar project While developing its beverage industry,


the valley also is responding to the grow- ing interest in solar energy. Virginia’s first community solar project is being built at the BARC Electric Cooperative facility in Rockbridge County. Instead of installing solar panels on their


rooftops, customers of the community solar project will have access to solar power gener- ated at a single facility. BARC is building and maintaining the system for its member-own- ers, who live in Rockbridge, Bath, Highland, Augusta and Alleghany counties. The cooperative also built an edu-


cational center at the facility to teach students and visitors about solar energy production. The classroom features a touch-screen display of real-time data from the solar array. At the announcement in August, Gov.


Terry McAuliffe called the community solar project “an excellent model for stabilizing and reducing energy costs, while deliver- ing clean solar power to large segments of households on the grid.”


Photos by Mark Rhodes


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