It's not exactly as simple as flipping a switch. There are inverters to be hooked up and connections to be checked, about a week's worth of work to turn 25 acres of steel and glass into Pocono Raceway's very own power station. But following a dedication ceremony Friday morning, a metaphorical switch will indeed be flipped, and Pocono -- yes, little Pocono -- will become an industry leader in one regard.

A solar farm constructed in one of the raceway's former parking lots will generate enough electricity to power the NASCAR facility as well as about 1,000 homes in the surrounding area, according to track and series officials. The facility, made up of 40,000 photovoltaic panels, will generate about three megawatts of electricity and instantly make Doc Mattioli's track in the Pennsylvania hills the largest solar-powered sports stadium in the world.

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... the project will last for 40 years, and that's a lot of time for that thing to be sitting there and making power. If we can do our little part not only for what we need, but also for the environment and society as a whole, it's a win-win-win.

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-- BRANDON IGDALSKY, Pocono Raceway

"I think in the back of your mind, it's always a gamble when you're doing a project like this. It's proven, but not proven in Pennsylvania, not proven in the sports world," said raceway president Brandon Igdalsky. "But [Mattioli] isn't going to gamble on anything that in the long run isn't going to be worthwhile to do. We spent two years deciding whether or not to do this project, we studied every model, every what-if. We kept going back to the same answer -- the project will last for 40 years, and that's a lot of time for that thing to be sitting there and making power. If we can do our little part not only for what we need, but also for the environment and society as a whole, it's a win-win-win."

The project will be more than twice as large as the second-biggest solar-powered sports facility, a stadium in Taiwan that generates about 1.2 megawatts. Igdalsky said the three megawatts produced by the Pocono facility will be converted into about 3.8 million kilowatt-hours, about 920 of which are needed to power a typical house for one month. The solar farm will also become a centerpiece of NASCAR's green initiative, complementing recycling and carbon-offset projects the series already has in place.

"This is the kind of size solar farm that a local community that wants to make a meaningful dent in its grid requirement would have," said Mike Lynch, managing director of NASCAR's green innovation. "It's utility-scale for a small town or a small city, and that's exactly how the raceway has it set up. ... This isn't about powering a few lights at the track. Token efforts have nothing to do with this. This is about making a meaningful contribution to the local community's power needs."

Igdalsky said the idea for the project emerged a few years ago when Pennsylvania announced its plans to deregulate the power industry in the state, a move that threatened to raise the track's electric bills 40 percent a year. Turning off extra lights here and there grew into a serious search for an alternative power source. Track executives explored the idea of a windmill farm, but discovered they were on the wrong side of a hill to generate enough wind. They talked to area ski resorts, hotels and resorts about putting together a conglomerate buying group. And they looked into solar power, at first thinking about just putting up some panels on top of the grandstands and the garage.

When they approached Mattioli with the idea, he proposed amping up the size, and using an old parking lot as the site. "As soon as he said that, it was taken to a whole new level," said Igdalsky, who is Mattioli's grandson. "We went from basically an oversized residential system to a utility-grade system. That's what we did. This will power everything we need."

And then some. The solar farm, which cost a reported $15 million to build but is expected to pay for itself in four to five years, will power the track, all ancillary buildings, a village opened last year across from the raceway, as well as a hotel and restaurant in nearby Blakeslee. Igdalsky said the facility will also produce about 40 percent more power that will be pumped into the electrical lines for community use, and will earn the raceway credits from the local power company.

Lynch said the executive team at Pocono handled the financing and the project management. Even so, the raceway's solar farm will stand as the biggest symbol yet of NASCAR's green initiative, which also includes battery, fluid and tire recycling, as well as tree planting to offset carbon emissions.

"It really hasn't been part of our modus operandi to make large, splashy announcements about things unless they were really well-established programs," said Lynch, who will attend Friday's 11 a.m. ET dedication. "Other programs we've done have been quite visible, but this being a fixed site and as large as it is will certainly be a visible symbol for the sport. ... This is a big announcement and a big project, and an amazing accomplishment by the raceway."

Finding a company to construct the facility wasn't easy, given that most sizeable renewable energy plants are found in Europe and the American West. Igdalsky checked with local companies and found they couldn't do more than a residential unit. Through contacts he was directed to enXco, a San Diego affiliate of a French parent company, which has constructed solar farms in California and New Jersey and has a 13-megawatt plant under construction on Long Island. Mattioli insisted that all the materials be American-made, so the panels came from Ohio, the wood from Oregon, and the steel from California. And yes -- it does generate power even on cloudy days.

Although it officially goes online Friday, Igdalsky said it will take about two weeks for the facility to become fully operational. A handful of other sports stadiums, from baseball parks in San Francisco and Boston to soccer arenas in Germany and Switzerland, draw some or all of their power from solar panels. Igdalsky hopes other race tracks in NASCAR -- many of which have the outlying space to accommodate such a facility -- take note of what Pocono is doing and consider following suit.

"If people see, yes, it works, we kind of hope everybody gets on board with this," he said. "It's going to depend a lot on government, not only federal but at a state level, to enact more comprehensive alternative energy programs, to drive this at a state level. California and New Jersey have excelled in that, and they're first and second in the country when it comes to renewable and particularly solar generation. We're so far behind the Europeans when it comes to this, it could be a great thing for this country if the states would step up and help push it along."