Middletown: Smart about power

Middletown Township in Delaware County is on a renewable energy roll.

SmartPower, a national, nonprofit marketing organization that promotes renewable energy, is giving the township a $10,000 solar panel capable of generating one kilowatt of electricity.

To earn the panel — which ten other Pennsylvania communities have already done — municipal officials had to commit to purchasing 20 percent of the township government's energy from clean energy sources by 2010. And seven percent of the households and businesses had to do likewise.

Middletown went for it in a big way, signing up more more households for wind energy than any other community in southeast Philadelphia, with the exception of Philadelphia.

It's part of a "clean energy communities campaign," a collaboration between SmartPower and the Pennsylvania Sustainable Development Fund. According to a statement, the goal is to build voluntary consumer demand for regionally-produced, commercial clean energy.