sentences:  Development and planning for the center began in 1999 when a group of Grand Valley State University faculty and Muskegon business people proposed a research and development facility focused on alternative energy.Subsequent partnerships between the business, community, and the private sector resulted in groundbreaking for the center in late 2002, and its completion in 2003.The facility was powered, in part, by a fuel cell and a micro turbine, which turned natural gas into electricity.