California's Fairfax Pavilion gets solar system for roof

Fairfax officials will dedicate a new 25-kilowatt solar system for the roof of the Fairfax Pavilion at a 6 p.m. ceremony Aug. 5 at the Fairfax Farmers Market in Bolinas Park. The new system, built by SPG Solar, Inc. of Novato, will provide electricity for the Fairfax Town Hall, police department and fire station, as well as the Pavilion.

Officials estimate that the new solar system will reduce the town's greenhouse gas production by 32 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year. A flat-screen monitor at Town Hall will allow residents to track the system's effectiveness. The Town Council plans to review its greenhouse gas emissions inventory, a survey of Fairfax's responses to climate change, at its Sept. 2 meeting.

"We encourage every citizen to examine their own activities and search for ways to reduce their personal greenhouse gas emissions at home, work, school or while commuting," Mayor David Weinsoff said.

Low Demand in Texas for Renewable Energy

Austin, Texas, is wondering whether GreenChoice was the right choice when it comes to cost-effective renewable energy.

GreenChoice from Austin Energy, allows businesses and homes to choose whether or not lock in five- and 10-year rates for electricity generated from wind and solar. Low energy prices, however, are making the GreenChoice renewable rates non-competitive.

In its most recent offering of renewable energy units, about 99 percent of the allotment has gone unsold, according to an article in the Austin American-Statesman. If the units remain unsold, because of the city’s contract with Austin Energy, the costs will be passed on to all customers.
According to Austin Energy’s Web site, a 5-year subscription to GreenChoice costs 8.0 cents per kWh, while a 10-year subscription comes with a charge of 9.5 cents per kWh.

By comparison, the regular residential rate for conventional electricity is 3.75 cents per kWh for the first 500 kWh, and 6.02 or 7.82 cents thereafter, for winter and summer months, respectively.

Large commercial users pay even less, about 1.5 cents per kWh, according to the site.
In terms of volume, GreenChoice is the nation’s most widely-adopted opt-in renewable electricity platform for residential and commercial applications. Established in 2000, the program sells more than 750 million kilowatt hours of renewables annually.

A range of businesses are using the GreenChoice program to reduce their carbon footprints. For example, the Austin campus of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is powered 100 percent by renewable energy sources such as wind power and biogas from the GreenChoice program. All told, about 3,500 customers signed up in the first year of GreenChoice.

The lack of sales for the current allotment has Roger Duncan, head of Austin Energy and the chief architect of GreenChoice, wondering whether it’s time for a change. “It was our intent to use (GreenChoice) to stimulate the market for renewables, which it did, and then eventually phase it out,” Duncan said. “It was never intended to go on forever.”

The structure of the city’s deal is burdonsome. Last year Austin decided to buy power from a $250 million Webberville, Texas, solar array. But the city council told Austin Energy to sell the energy solely through GreenChoice, which imports the renewable electricity from West Texas.
When oil and natural gas prices were spiking, the 10-year fixed rate was attractive to businesses. But now that commodity prices have fallen, so has demand for the GreenChoice option. Previous offerings took about a half a year to sell out. But this time, seven months into the business cycle, only 104 homes and five businesses have signed up.

Price may also have something to do with the slack in demand. In the article, Mike Sloan, president of renewable energy consulting firm Virtus Energy, said the recent GreenChoice units are about 75 percent more expensive than ones offered in early 2008.

“Austin Energy’s main business is selling power from coal and gas plants that they own,” Sloan told the Statesman. “GreenChoice competes with that; that’s the basic problem.”
Once the Webberville solar array comes into production, its solar energy will cost twice as much as the current GreenChoice offerings, Duncan said.

How to Make a Solar Panel

Learning how to make a solar panel can be a fun and exciting process. Not only you can make it into a cohesion day for you and your family, you can also benefit from all it's energy saving ability. Several years back, you'll never figured out how to make a solar panel. However, with the advancement of internet access, it is now made possible. In other words, you can now acquire this great knowledge through instructional guides online, plus video provided too.

With a solar panel, you can lessen or totally eliminate your dependency on your local power company. Another benefit is that since you are tapping into a clean and renewable source of energy, you do not create any harmful effects that may damage the environment. Also, instead of you paying for electricity, this time round, the power company pays you!

Perhaps people are suddenly looking into how to make a solar panel by themselves nowadays due to the increasing cost of electricity. You can also choose to buy ready built packages from professional installers. Finished packages might cost as much as $10,000, whereas do-it-yourself ones will come out around $200. They may cost a little expensive, but whichever option you choose, it will still come out to lots of savings in the long run if you compare them to being hooked up to your electric company. Because not only will you wean yourself from them, the maintenance cost is also not expensive.

Do not be overwhelmed with the thought that making one yourself is impossible. You do not need an engineering degree to put one together because there are plans for it already. The materials are not difficult to to find through the Internet or from Do-It-Yourself or hardware stores within your area.

The materials that you will usually need are:

• A sheet of plywood

• Wire crimping tool

• Wire cutters

• Solder, 60/40 or silver

• Soldering iron, or soldering station

• Sheets of glass

• Drill

• Copper wires

• Screwdriver

• Cobalt steel jobbers' twist drill bit, heavy duty, wire gauge size 26, 3" L, 1c" L flute

• Machine screw size high-speed steel hand tap taper, 10-24, H3 pitch diameter, 4 flute

• 7/32 drill bit

• Plastic sheet cutter

• Reamer

• Pliers

• Hacksaw

The good thing about these materials is that they can be scalable, meaning you can control the size of the system for the appliances that you want them to handle. You can choose to compartmentalize usage or build a whole array to power your entire house. And the best thing is that there is no pressure. Whatever budget you can sink in for a particular time would be fine. This gives you a sense of accomplishment aside from enjoying the savings you get out of your little project.

If you are interested to learn how to make a solar panel, visit: http://www.greenearth4energy.com/

You may also want to get your solar panel installation guide here: http://www.earthenergyguide.com/

Central Florida's Solar Industry Growing Hotter

As seen in...




(click on the photo to read the story on the Sentinel's website.)

Central Florida's solar industry growing hotter

Maureen McHale is marketing and public-relations manager and Edgardo Rodriguez is executive vice president with Advanced Solar Photonics in Lake Mary, which plans to ramp up production later this month. (ROBERTO GONZALEZ, ORLANDO SENTINEL / June 19, 2009)



In the midst of a dreary economy, the people behind a new company in Lake Mary say things are looking quite sunny.

Advanced Solar Photonics plans to start manufacturing solar panels later this month. While Orange County is courting a solar manufacturer from Ohio, the Lake Mary upstart is among a number of solar companies that already make Central Florida home.

And they say that, despite the economy, business is great.

Advanced Solar Photonics expects to hire 1,500 people within the next two years. UMA Solar, an Altamonte Springs company that sells a variety of solar goods, plans to start manufacturing solar water heaters in Seminole County this summer. Winter Haven-based QuickBeam, which has been designing and installing solar-electric systems for a year and a half, just opened a second location in Orlando.

"We've seen explosive growth in the solar business locally," said Richard Smith, president of Longwood's Superior Solar Systems, which worked on the 1-megawatt solar electric system recently installed on the roof of the Orange County Convention Center.

Across the state, more people are putting solar panels on homes, on commercial buildings or in sunny, remote areas to capture solar energy and to use it for heating water or producing power. A household solar-electric system can be as simple as a panel that powers an outdoor light or as complex as a series of roof panels that provide electricity to an entire home.

Those in the solar industry say the combined momentum of government incentives, the green movement and the search for cheaper energy is creating the growing demand. Membership in the Longwood-based Florida Solar Energy Industries Association has doubled within the past 18 months to about 130 members.

"It's a hot topic — sorry for the pun," said Sherri Shields, assistant director for communications at the Florida Solar Energy Center in Cocoa, a research institute of the University of Central Florida. "With the price of oil fluctuating and energy independence, I think people are finally starting to pay attention to solar."

The center's solar-technology training courses are booked through October, and there's a waiting list for the certifications the center provides for solar equipment used in Florida.

Solar companies in Central Florida generally fall into two categories: those that started with a round of government incentives in the late 1970s, and those that started less than five years ago amid fresh demand.

The older companies say they survived on pool-heating business between the original incentives, which ended in the 1980s, and the recent resurgence. Now, pool business has declined along with the construction industry, while solar water heaters and solar electric systems, which can help homeowners save on power bills, are doing well.

In 2006, the state started offering rebates of as much as $100,000 for companies and $20,000 for residences that installed solar systems. Money budgeted for the rebates has been spent, but a round of federal stimulus dollars is expected to fill the gap. The program sunsets in July 2010.

"I remain cautiously optimistic that we can get it extended," said Bruce Kershner, executive director of the Florida Solar Energy Industries Association.

Since January, Florida property owners have also been able to claim a property-tax exemption for solar installations. And at the federal level, the 30 percent residential-solar tax credit used to be capped at $2,000, but last year lawmakers eliminated the limit. Federal stimulus packages have also emphasized green building techniques.

But along with the growth in solar technology have come unqualified technicians. Contractors complain that they often have to fix others' shoddy work.

"You need to make sure that these are licensed people that you are dealing with," Smith said.

Rachael Jackson can be reached at rjackson@orlandosentinel.com or 407-540-4358

Combing in the Energy - Maureen McHale's Article in Global Solar Technology

Global Solar Technology's May/June 2009 issue featured an article I wrote.

To read the article online, click the link below and see pages 18 and 19.

Combing in the Energy

Or, you can visit the website and download the PDF.
http://globalsolartechnology.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3291

Solar Grows Even in Sluggish Ecomony

In this rather unusual economic year there’s still business going on in what had been one of the fasting growing industries on the planet: solar energy.

Companies are still embracing solar because they think it’s the right thing to do:

Communications, media and automotive services company, Cox Enterprises, has completed a 100 kilowatt (kW) photovoltaic (PV) solar system at Cox's Manheim DRIVE facility in Stockbridge, Georgia.

The Manheim DRIVE Center is the first-of-its-kind innovation center in the vehicle remarketing industry. The Center hosts conferences, symposiums, roundtables and management retreats, as well as live auctions that are held in the 180-seat bidding theater. Since its opening in 2004, more than 20,000 guests from around the world have visited DRIVE.

Power from the system will be fed into the Georgia Power grid and is the largest solar array wired into the utility company’s power lines.

Cox also has photovoltaic power systems and solar thermal energy systems in facilities such as auction houses and automotive detailing shops in Bordentown, New Jersey; Phoenix, Arizona and Rancho Santa Margarita, California.

The company has an environmental initiative it calls Cox Conserves. In the internally developed program, Cox Enterprises seeks to embrace renewable forms of energy, conserve resources and reduce the company’s greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2017.

There’s still money from banks for solar energy:

When completed by the end of 2009, the 53 megawatt (MW) DC photovoltaic (PV) power plant near the German city of Cottbus will be the largest in Germany and the second largest in the world.

Being built on 400 acres of land, the plant will consist of approximately 700,000 modules and provide power in daylight hours for up to 14,000 Germany homes.

And, the project has received bank funding at a time when banks seem stingy in lending. The developers, First Solar and Juwi Holding have secured more than 80 percent of the required project capital through non-recourse debt from a consortium of banks. Non-recourse debt are loans secured by a pledge of collateral, typically real property.

Construction of the project on a remediated site once used by the Soviet Army began in January 2009, and the first 15 MW have been completed. The remaining 38 MW are scheduled to be completed by the end of 2009.

Retailers who have the cash are still willing to spend it on solar power:

In these slow, but perking up, economic times no nonsense retailer Wal-Mart is holding up relatively well. The company is doing so well that it is continuing its store-solarizing program in California. The company has selected BP Solar to provide photovoltaic solar power systems for 10 - 20 systems built on Wal-Mart store rooftops.

Under a power purchase agreement (PPA) negotiated for the projects, BP will finance, install and maintain the systems and Wal-Mart will have immediate access to clean electricity with no up front capital cost to the retailer.

The new agreement works on an established relationship between the major retailer and BP Solar. In 2008, BP Solar completed construction on 4.1 megawatts of solar energy systems for seven Wal-Mart stores and Sam’s Clubs in California.

The Sun still shines on urban areas:

The Sun is not picky. It isn’t selective. It points its rays in all directions and lets them strike where they may, including urban Chicago, Illinois.

Electric utility Exelon and solar power manufacturer SunPower Corporation have announced that they will jointly develop the nation’s largest urban solar power plant, if the project gets a federal loan guarantee under the recently passed federal stimulus legislation formally known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

For the project Exelon will lease 39 acres of the West Pullman Industrial Redevelopment Area on the South Side of the Windy City. The $60 million, 10-megawatt solar photovoltaic (PV) facility is scheduled for completion by the end of this year. The companies believe the loan guarantee will be approved.

The Sunshine State is still getting sunnier.

The FPL Group, the parent company of Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) and NextEra Energy Resources (once FPL Energy), has signed a supply agreement with SunPower Corporation for SunPower’s solar panels and its tracking technology that keeps panels aimed at the Sun.

That announcement seems minor compared with the potential of the accompanying announcement from FPL and SunPower. That announcement reads, “SunPower will also locate a research and development center employing up to 50 employees in Florida IF the state government continues to support the deployment of additional solar energy. SunPower will work with FPL and the state to identify a suitable location for such a facility. Continued strong demand in Florida also could lead to manufacturing and distribution centers for solar panels and tracking systems being located in the state as well.” (I put the “IF” in caps.)

Florida, best known for its big blue sky, hot beaches, hurricanes and alligators, has been lacking in its obvious solar potential until recent years. Maybe this is the bigger push that it needs.

FPL and SunPower are developing two solar electric plants in the state, the 25 MW DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center and the 10 MW Space Coast Next Generation Solar Energy Center. FPL is also building the Martin Next Generation Solar Energy Center. It will generate 75 megawatts of solar thermal power capacity.