Local Winery Uses Solar Power to Bring Electric Car Charging to Visitors

In February, Linganore Winecellars in Mount Airy made the big switch to running on , saving energy and earning them the Green Business of the Year award by The Baltimore Business Journal.

Recently, the winery has added to their ongoing goal of "going green" with their newest addition -- solar powered car charging stations.

The project was a dream for Linganore president and winemaker Anthony Aellen who was touring Italy and came across the chargers in wine country and with "green" in mind he thought, "how do I get this in Maryland?"

So he started looking into options to get the chargers and their energy saving solar power to his winery.

"I was working with the grant writer for the solar panel system and her friend Jill Sorenson (executive director of the Baltimore Electric Vehicle Initiative) had a grant for placing 50 of the SemaConnect charging stations in and around Baltimore and I made an off the cuff comment that I’d love to have charging stations and that got translated to Jill," said Aellen.

The grant for the new SemaConnect chargers was awarded through the USDA, with the installation and hook up completed by Reisterstown based company Earth and Air Technologies.

"Everything fell in place and it's really a cool feature to have at our winery," said Aellen.

As of Friday, the winery had generated 58 kilowatts of energy and saved 100 pounds of carbon dioxide in just two days of the chargers being in place.

While there haven't been any cars plugged into the chargers just yet, the winery is holding a ribbon cutting ceremony on Monday, Dec. 5 at 2 p.m., when Aellen said three cars will be coming as part of the day's events to show off the new charging feature.

"I just think it's incredible," said Aellen. "We've been using the sun to grow grapes and now we're using it to harness energy for our cars."