WILLISTON – Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., looked on the bright side of Monday’s finger-numbing cold weather at the announcement of a federal solar panel test center coming to Chittenden County.

“There’s sun out there to dispel any rumors Vermont doesn’t get sun in the winter,” Sanders joked.

The $3 million Regional Test Center, to be built on about seven acres owned by IBM in Williston, would be one of five in the United States. The others are being built in Colorado, Florida, New Mexico and Nevada. The Vermont center is expected to be operational in the next few months.

The goal of the center, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative, is to help find ways to reduce the cost of solar energy by 75 percent by 2020 and generate at least 15 percent of America’s electricity with solar power by 2030.

The state entered into a partnership with Sandia National Laboratories and other institutions several years ago to conduct energy research.

Representatives from Sandia, IBM and the U.S. Department of Energy joined Gov. Peter Shumlin and Sanders to launch the test center Monday morning.

Shumlin credited Sanders with pushing for the center in Vermont, saying the senator had been “like a dog on a bone to ensure we get the partners together to advance these efforts.”

Sanders said it’s critical for the United States to make the transition to solar and other forms of renewable energy because of global warming, which he said is contributing to a drop in food production around the world, leading to “more hunger, more dislocation and more international tension.”

Minh Le, director of the solar energy technologies office for the U.S. Department of Energy, said the SunShot Initiative was inspired by President Kennedy’s moonshot initiative in the 1960s.

“There is potential for solar power all across the nation,” Le said.

Continue reading here.