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An Array Of Solar Incentives Shine On Minnesotans

2012-02-25T20:00:44Z

If you are a customer of Minnesota Power and have been toying with the idea of installing a solar energy system in your home or business, newly announced incentives could just convince you to take the plunge. Minnesota Power has updated its SolarSense program [PDF], aiming to make it more affordable for individuals and businesses to make use of both solar electric heating and solar thermal water heating.

The newly updated program includes an array of solar incentives and rebates targeting energy savings, while at the same time, promoting local solar manufacturers. Residents and business owners who install solar energy systems could be provided a base rebate starting at as much as $2,000 per kilowatt produced, according to the utility company, as well as rewarding those who chose to buy equipment or systems that have been manufactured in the state.

image via Shutterstock

Altogether, the new incentives and base rates could add to as much as $4,750 per kilowatt for qualifying solar projects. So, for example,a homeowner who decides to install a 5 kilowatt solar system for their home, could qualify for more than $20,000 in rebates and incentives. And, it’s not just customers are that are being helped by the incentives.

“Minnesota Power has a long-standing history of encouraging the adoption of renewable energy options such as solar electric systems,” Tina Koecher, manager of energy efficiency, Minnesota Power said in a statement. If you are one of Minnesota Power’s more than 144,000 customers who is interested in solar power incentives, go visit SolarSense.

How to Get Started With Solar Energy

2012-02-24T16:29:46Z

Solar energy, a renewable and nonpolluting source of energy and heat, offers a wide array of benefits, both to the planet and to individual homeowners.

Downtown Portland Gets Its Biggest PV System

2012-02-25T17:00:05Z

A public solar power project that raised a bit of a ruckus in Portland, Ore., because some saw it as a big investment with a small payoff is complete—and the agency that made it happen is working to convince people it made good fiscal sense.

TriMet, the public transit provider in the Portland metro area, said a 61-kilowatt (kW) system at the end of two light-rail lines near Portland State University went into operation in mid-February. The agency said the South Terminus array was expected to produce around 65,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy annually, “offsetting energy used by site lighting and two light rail electrical system buildings” and “adding clean energy to the Portland General Electric grid.”

image via Hennebery Eddy Architects

The project became something of a controversy—even in ultra-green Portland—when the Oregonian newspaper, reacting to a skeptical tweet by a local transit blogger, published a story with the headline: “TriMet’s $370,600 solar-power project for MAX at Portland State University will save only $3,680 a year.” As of last count, some 145 comments regarding the story had been logged, many of them along the lines of the one from “obamaservant,” who wrote: “Perfect candidate for more BS funding from the current administration … see Solyndra.”

With its announcement that the project was up and running, TriMet appeared ready to derail any critics.

“Estimated first year energy savings for TriMet is $4,880, based on 2011 rates,” the agency said. “Over the 25-plus-year life of the solar system, TriMet will earn more than 25 times its initial investment as the value of electricity generated continues to be credited against its power bill. This credit will increase as electricity rates rise over time.”

The agency said as well that while the solar installation cost was $366,000, its share was a mere $4,936, in large part because $263,151 in grants and credit offsets took the net installation cost down to about $102,849.

TriMet also argued that the city requires the prefabricated rectifier and signals buildings at the site be enclosed in order to screen the views from surrounding buildings. It said using wire mesh instead of solar panels would have cost around $75,000 less than solar panels up front, but given the incentives available for solar installations, solar was actually cheaper in the end. Plus, there’s the power it will produce.

The South Terminus system comprises 253 240-watt panels from SolarWorld, the big manufacturer based just west of Portland in Hillsboro. TriMet said South Terminus is the largest PV system in downtown Portland, although there are bigger systems outside the central business district, including a 100-kW system on a Powell’s Books warehouse and several systems that top 100 kW on schools in other parts of the city.

Skeptics and supporters alike can track the South Terminus system’s performance online.

Guest Post: Solar Hosting

2012-02-22T15:30:07Z

In January 2012, research group Environment California released a report highlighting the phenomenal growth of solar energy in the state of California. California, which is leading the nation in deployments, has installed just over 1,000 megawatts of solar power through 2011. While California is the standard-bearer for solar energy in the U.S., countries such as Germany have installed 17 times that amount, with 4,000 megawatts deployed in the month of December 2011 alone.

The good news is that, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), California has just begun to tap its potential for renewable energy. NREL estimates that existing buildings have the capacity to support up to 80,000 megawatts of rooftop solar systems. With ample rooftop space and surging energy demands, the potential to grow solar in California and beyond is significant. The question remains, however: how do we get there from here?

Financial innovations such as commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) and expanded residential leasing options can help make solar more affordable for people who own their roof. For everybody else, a new kind of solar model is emerging: solar hosting.

Solar hosting provides another option for renters who don’t own a roof, as well as property owners with rooftops that aren’t ideal for solar due to technical limitations such as excess shading, lack of a proper southern orientation or having an uncertain roof replacement time horizon. Solar hosting also solves a problem for people reluctant to make long-term financial investments or individuals living or working in high-density, multi-story buildings that simply don’t have enough rooftop space to hold enough panels for everybody.

How does it work?

Solar hosting is a lot like web server hosting. If you don’t want to run your own server, you keep it in a co-location facility (sometimes called “the cloud”) and let somebody else take care of the network infrastructure and physical location management. Solar hosting works the same way. It lets you enjoy the benefit of solar panels, without having them physically located on your roof.

A variety of underlying business models can be supported with solar hosting. One size will likely not fit all needs, and several approaches and pricing models are expected to emerge in this growing marketplace. Solar can be sold as a “service,” which would be structured as a subscription. For example, you might “rent” a panel or purchase a block of kilowatt-hours. Alternatively, it could involve a fractional ownership model structured as a co-op, where the members have an ownership stake in an entity that owns the land and produces power. Another possibility is an allocation as part of a larger property deed similar to how some condominiums include title to a detached parking space. The condo complex or master-planned community of the future could include a small plot of land to host your own solar panels as part of your ownership deed.

Policy to the Rescue

In California, a bill (SB843) has been proposed to help unleash the potential of this new solar deployment framework. This policy innovation would allow individuals to subscribe to or own solar generation assets on non-contiguous parcels and credit them back to their own utility bill. Details of the billing mechanism have not yet been finalized, such as the price at which the solar generation credit is applied back to an individual’s utility bill. However, the potential to open up the solar market to both renters and rooftop owners with an “inhospitable environment” is certainly tantalizing.

Meanwhile, Colorado has already passed a solar hosting law and is in the early phases of a 6-megawatt pilot project; San Diego Gas and Electric has proposed a 10-megawatt pilot project to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC); and the state of Maryland has introduced its own solar hosting legislation (SB595).

Solar Everywhere

Rather than simply build out each traditional solar installation to meet only the needs of that particular site’s electricity consumption, what if property owners were actually incentivized to utilize 100 percent of their physical space capacity for solar and sell the excess power to other people? If California establishes the proper financial incentive structures, it could give Germany a run for its money. Countless jobs and economic development opportunities hang in the balance.

Just like web servers enabled the transformational model of “cloud computing,” solar hosting opens up an entirely new market for renewable energy. While many people will continue to put panels on their own facilities, solar hosting becomes a new option for people who want to “go solar" -- just not on their own roof. Why not give those people a chance to participate and expand solar access for everybody?

Solar hosting opens those doors.

***

Lee Barken, CPA, LEED-AP is the Energy and Cleantech practice leader at Haskell & White, LLP and serves on the board of directors of CleanTECH San Diego and as Vice-Chair of the WREGIS Stakeholder Advisory Committee. Lee writes and speaks on the topics of renewable energy project finance, green building, IT audit compliance and wireless LAN technology.

Apple to Build Largest Solar Array

2012-02-23T07:12:08Z

The creators of the iPad, iPhone, and iPod are going to be building America’s largest end-user-owned, onsite solar array at their North Carolina data center.

Apple's Maiden, North Carolina data center

Apple’s Maiden, North Carolina data center is already one of the most energy-efficient of its kind, earning the LEED Platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, the highest possible certification from LEED. In typical Apple fashion, they note that they “know of no other data center of comparable size that has achieved this level of LEED certification.”

The energy-efficient design elements of the Maiden facility include:

A chilled water storage system to improve chiller efficiency by transferring 10,400 kWh of electricity consumption from peak to off-peak hours each day.
Use of “free” outside air cooling through a waterside economizer operation during night and cool-weather hours, which, along with water storage, allows the chillers to be turned off more than 75 percent of the time.
Extreme precision in managing cooling distribution for cold-air containment pods, with variable-speed fans controlled to exactly match air flow to server requirements from moment to moment.
Power distributed at higher voltages, which increases efficiency by reducing power loss.
White cool-roof design to provide maximum solar reflectivity.
High-efficiency LED lighting combined with motion sensors.
Real-time power monitoring and analytics during operations.
Construction processes that utilized 14 percent recycled materials, diverted 93 percent of construction waste from landfills, and sourced 41 percent of purchased materials within 500 miles of the site.

Now, though, Apple will be adding to this impressive list a 100-acre, 20-megawatt solar array that will supply 42 million kilowatt hours of renewable energy every year. Apple will also be installing a 5-megawatt fuel cell installation that will be powered by 100 percent biogas and provide more than 40 million kilowatt hours of 24×7 baseload renewable energy annually.

The news was made as part of the release of Apple’s facilities 2012 report (pdf), which outlines the nature of Apple’s facilities across the planet and their environmental impact therein.

Mar Vista CLIMATE REALITY: The Race to 100% Clean Power

2012-02-23T00:51:02Z

On Thursday, March 8, 2012 at 5:30pm at the Mar Vista public library, Open Neighborhoods and PermaCity present Mar Vista CLIMATE REALITY -- a free event looking at climate change impacts and solutions. RSVP at www.openmarvista.net/climatereality The event will include a screening of FUEL, a fast-paced 35 minute look into our clean energy future and winner of the Sundance Audience Award. Mar Vista CLIMATE REALITY is part of an LA County-wide solar program offering free rooftop assessments and group discounts for residential, commercial and multi-family solar panel installations. Continue reading →

Solar Panel Design Tries To Not Be Ordinary

2012-02-22T22:02:34Z

When you think of solar panels, what comes to mind?

“Most typically people imagine a solar panel as rectangular ridged frame with black surface mounted on glass or steel and placed on a roof or pole,” said Todd Dalland, President of Pvilion, a developer and manufacturer of flexible photovoltaic products.

Feed-In Tariff for PV in Palo Alto, Calif. Imminent

2012-02-22T02:00:58Z

What do Germany, Italy, Gainesville, Florida, Sacramento, California and Palo Alto, California have in common?

Well, as of March 5, all of those places will have solar feed-in tariffs (FIT). That's if Palo Alto's City Council passes the feed-in tariff pilot program it has developed over the last few quarters.

It's a pilot program for the City of Palo Alto Utilities (CPAU) -- the first year is capped at 4 megawatts and meant for medium-sized commercial rooftops with a minimum size of 50 kilowatts per installation. The FIT is applicable to solar only, although other renewable energy sources could be considered later on. The city will pay $0.14 per kilowatt-hour for 20-year contracts.

Palo Alto is arguably the heart of Silicon Valley, home to dozens of venture capital firms and thousands of new companies armed with a startup and innovation culture fueled by its immediate neighbor, Stanford University. The city itself has about 26,000 electric meters and a peak load of approximately 180 megawatts.

The program limits itself to medium and large commercial solar rooftops in the interest of keeping workload issues to a minimum in the early stages of this endeavor.

The $0.14 per kilowatt-hour figure was based on the city's avoided cost. Here's the calculation:

$0.070 for energy
$0.034 green premium
$0.006 local capacity value, essentially avoided distribution grid costs
$0.019 avoided transmission access charges (TAC), an amount paid in California for every kilowatt-hour that is delivered from the transmission grid.
$0.006 avoided transmission losses
Total: $0.1355 per kilowatt-hour

So, the $0.14 per kilowatt-hour FIT price includes a $0.0045 premium and was agreed upon as a number that would attract developer interest. The cost of a fully subscribed program would be $29,000 per year; the city council estimates that the cost to the utility customer would be $0.01 per month. At this scale and modest cost, the city gains experience with the permitting, interconnection, metering, and billing process while developers gain experience in working with Palo Alto. (Note that Gainesville, Florida's FIT price was in the $0.26 to $0.32 range, which is good for developers, but perhaps not so good for municipalities.)

Craig Lewis, the Director of the Clean Coalition, a distributed generation advocacy group, attended the February 7 Palo Alto City Council meeting and commented that he saw this as "a good program, because it is constrained and not open to residential rooftops." He added, "It delivers the trifecta of being cost-effective, timely, and environmentally sustainable, and the pilot program is designed for success by avoiding pitfalls like dealing with tax complications of residential-level projects."

Jon Abendschein, Palo Alto's Resource Planner, believes that $0.14 per kilowatt-hour is a price that will attract developers to the program.

Detractors of feed-in tariffs have claimed that the prices can never be set at a proper rate and that auction mechanisms are a more equitable solution. Others have argued that having no subsidy at all is the right solution. In the meantime, Palo Alto will likely have a FIT in place come March 5.

Trina Launches New Solar Advocacy and PR Campaign with Patrick Dempsey

2012-02-21T14:00:00Z

The "Power Behind the Panel" is getting more in front. Last week, Trina Solar invited me and about 100 other guests to a private Beverly Hills home where Mark Kingsley, Trina’s Chief Commercial Officer (pictured below), and Grey’s Anatomy star Patrick Dempsey unveiled “15 Minutes,” a new solar PR and advocacy campaign.

Solar Hill House Built In Harmony With Nature

2012-02-17T22:00:42Z

We’ve all seen those huge houses perched precariously on the side of a hill or mountain. They look like a stiff wind or steady rain would send them tumbling down the slope, and often, that’s exactly what happens when inclement weather hits.

But this award-winning design for a solar-powered hillside house proves that elevated living can happen in harmony with nature, as long as an appreciation for local weather, site conditions, and sustainable building principles are incorporated from the micro to macro scale.

image via Stefanie Sebald

Designed by Stefanie Sebald, a young architect from Wellington, New Zealand, the house began with a thorough analysis of the weather and sun patterns of the site, so that solar energy and mountain views could be maximized, while minimizing wind resistance. Because the hillside site is so steep, Sebald created a graduated design in which the living level is considerably higher than the level at the road. The result is a home with two separate pavilions that are connected with a partially buried link.

Everything in the design, from the angle of the roofs to the slope of the site, was deliberately planned to facilitate self-sufficient living in the Wellington Hills while disrupting the surrounding ecosystem as little as possible.

image via Stefanie Sebald

“Collection of rain water, incorporation of landscaping and vegetable gardens as well as the deliberate preservation of native bush around the site are further methods used to create a sustainable project,” wrote Sebald on Behance.net.

Thoughtful architectural planning, as demonstrated by this home design, represents the future of green building. Homes that are conservative in size, and designed to work in harmony with the elements, instead of deliberately standing in their way, are ultimately the cheapest to maintain and most pleasant to inhabit. Hopefully, instead of merely building traditional homes with greener materials, we’ll soon see more structures designed to help people appreciate and protect the planet.

Positive education: Sacramento high school goes solar

2012-02-18T04:44:39Z

Ah, high school. Those were the days. Well, not really. I couldn’t wait to get out of that place. Then again, my high school was the kind of place that turns up in horror movies. But hey, it’s Friday night. I’d rather imagine that I went to high school in Dillon, Texas, and Tami Taylor was my sympathetic counselor. But I digress.

I’d like to think that the students of St. Francis High School in Sacramento will go on to have much happier memories of the best years of their lives. They’ll certainly have good stories to tell their kids, like how they remember when most schools were powered by expensive electricity, and not primarily powered by the sun.

St. Francis recently installed a 253-kilowatt solar energy system to seven buildings on campus, which is expected to generate up to 31 percent of the school’s electricity, and save them a whopping $1 million in energy costs over the next 20 years.

The school’s new energy system is showcased in a new report from the Environment California Research & Policy Center, “California’s Solar Cities 2012: Leaders in the Race Toward a Clean Energy Future.” Paid for through a grant from the U.S. Treasury and through rebates from the Sacramento Municipal Utility Department (SMUD).

“Our students are excited and happy to have solar panels here at the high school,” explained Ingrid Niles, the communications director of St. Francis to the Valley Community News (wow, high schools have communications directors now?) “I think overall, our kids think having something like this is pretty cool and we hope we inspire a few of them to look at this stuff after high school.”

Taco Bell’s First All Solar-Powered Restaurant To Open In Moreno Valley

2012-02-16T20:58:09Z

MORENO VALLEY (CBS) — Fast food restaurants in the Inland Empire are tapping into solar power to save money on their super-sized energy bills.

A Taco Bell now under construction in Moreno Valley will be the first in the restaurant’s chain to be all solar-powered, the Riverside Press-Enterprise reports.

A 200-foot long roof is being constructed over its entire drive-through line and will be covered with 155 solar panels, possibly the first of its kind, owner Grover Moss told the newspaper.

The restaurant’s final structural plans to the city still have to be approved by the city, but Moss hopes to open the 3,000-square-foot restaurant this month.

Moss reportedly owns 11 other Taco Bells in Riverside County and says his energy bills range from $3,000 to $6,000 a month per store. Despite the high initial cost of the store’s construction at $1 million, Moss told the Press-Enterprise he expects to save up to 70 percent on energy bills.

Moss’s solar-powered Taco Bell is not the first solar-powered restaurant in the area. A McDonald’s in Riverside was the first in the county to cover its shaded carport with solar panels in October 2010.

These Solar Homes All Look To Be Winners

2012-02-16T23:00:36Z

Dow Chemical has announced the winners of its International Dow Solar Design to Zero Competition. The competition invited design, architecture and engineering students to come up with near-zero energy homes that use both active and passive solar energy. After launching the competition in August 2011, Dow received a total of 131 entries from 19 different countries.

From the pool of entries, 32 teams were chosen in December 2011, and from those, the three winners were announced during the 2012 National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) International Builders’ Show in Orlando, Fla. Winners reigned from both the United States and Canada.

image via Ericmlaine.com

The first place prize of $20,000 went to the Live/Work team from South Carolina. Designers Eric Laine and Suzanne Steelman are graduate students from Clemson University School of Architecture. They designed a home that incorporates both commercial and residential functionalities. The structure embraces its urban setting both architecturally and economically, adapting its energy systems to the regional environment and integrating those systems seamlessly into the aesthetic design of the building.

Daniel Kim and Caitlin Ranson, also from Clemson University School of Architecture, took home the second place prize along with a $10,000 for their Project Zero design. The structure is comprised of concrete masonry units that make for an energy efficient modern house. The home also incorporates multiple zones that decrease the cost and the energy footprint.

Image via Dow

Third place and a $5,000 prize went to The Silo House design from Canada. Team members Leon Lai and Eric Tan created a dwelling that transformed an abandoned oil silo into a residential house. The team used the spherical shape of the oil silo to allow for the optimal collection of solar energy year round.

Along with the competition’s overall winners, Dow Solar announced four honorable mention teams. Tongji Team 2 from China created an energy efficient dwelling designed with the Chinese farmer in mind. Team Partial Submersion from the U.S. sunk the building in order to protect it from the heat and cold of the climate.

The third honorable mention team, VegaSol, used passive and active solar systems to respond to the Las Vegas environment. Liquid Arquitectura Team from Spain created an urban architectural example that garnered them an honorable mention.

“Working with all the enthusiastic and extremely talented international students throughout this competition has not only been incredibly rewarding but has been an amazing learning experience for me,” Peter Anders of Kayvala Consulting and Dow Solar Design to Zero student advisor said in a statement. “Each submission provided innovative and revolutionary designs that will help transform the future of sustainable building; these are the architects and engineers of tomorrow and it has been a great experience working with Dow to see these ideas for our future unfold.”

Power of the people: Wisconsin Solar farm helps individual investors

2012-02-17T01:44:00Z

The brainchild of Convergence Energy of Lake Geneva, the networked solar farm has taken shape in the last couple of years as a green-power investment for people who want to invest in solar energy but, for one reason or another, can't at their home or business.

The farm, which is now complete, is a series of 33 individual, limited liability companies. Each totals about 80 solar panels on three tracking towers that rotate to follow the sun from east to west. That generates about 30 percent more power than a more conventional system affixed atop a roof.

http://walworthcountytoday.com/news/2012/feb/07/power-people-solar-farm-helps-individual-investors/

Joy Hughes, Founder, Solar Gardens Institute http://www.solargardens.org
CEO, Solar Panel Hosting LLC http://www.solarpanelhosting.com
(719)207-3097 direct

How Distributed Solar Can Reduce Electricity Prices

2012-02-13T21:56:40Z

What if installing more solar could reduce electricity prices? It’s already happening in Germany, world leader in solar power, and it’s likely to happen in the U.S., too.

Right now, the idea of solar reducing electricity prices seems silly. After all, when subsidies aren’t factored in, the cost of residential solar will be higher than residential retail electricity prices in all but 3 states until after 2016. But solar has two key factors in its favor:

Electricity, like many things, costs more when in high demand. And while many U.S. ratepayers on are flat rate electricity plans, the truth is that their utility pays more to deliver electricity on those hot, sunny afternoons in the summer when air conditioners are running like mad. Utilities call these times “peak periods,” when electricity use spikes and they have to turn on every last power plant.
Solar PV arrays tend to produce at their best during these peak periods.

The following chart shows how PG&E (a California utility) charges significantly more for electricity during the afternoon hours when demand is high, and how a south-facing, fixed-tilt solar array can produce a lot of electricity during those peak hours.

Solar output can actually match this peak curve better, if the panels are angled toward the southwest rather than due south, resulting in more late afternoon output.

Either way, however, solar adds electricity to the electricity system when it needs it most. And when that happens, it supplants electricity that was previously supplied by the dirtiest and most costly fossil fuel “peaking” power plants. In Germany, the sharp growth in solar power output (from 3 gigawatt-hours in 2007 to over 18 gigawatt-hours in 2011) reduced the cost of electricity during their mid-day peak period by 40%, almost completely eliminating the price differential between peak electricity and the base cost.

The process where solar supplants expensive peaking power is called the “merit order effect.” It works because utilities buy solar power on long-term contracts and there is zero marginal cost to take solar electricity at any particular time (they’ve already paid for it). The peaking plants, on the other hand, tend to sell their power on the spot market. Therefore, every megawatt of additional solar on the grid during a peak period supplants a megawatt of peaking power, eventually putting those costly plants out of the picture. Ultimately, it means that during periods of high solar PV output, there won’t be peak power events with higher electricity prices.

Admittedly, the U.S. has a ways to go. Solar produced enough electricity for as much as 17% of peak demand in Germany in 2011, while one of the U.S. leaders in solar per capita – Gainesville, FL – only serves about 1.5% of its peak demand with solar.

But solar is growing at an exponential rate in the U.S., just as it did in Germany. And since solar can provide power when the grid needs it most, there’s a lot more to its cost than cents and kilowatt-hours.

This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project.

Solar Powered Breweries: A Photo Gallery

2012-02-13T23:00:31Z

It’s nice to relax after a long day with a cold beer (provided you’re old enough to drink, that is), but what’s not so nice is considering the energy that breweries, particularly large-scale ones, consume during the brewing process. From heating the water to making the beer itself and providing energy for the machinery to operate, there’s no question that making beer takes up quite a lot of energy to produce.

Image via Anderson Valley Brewing Company

But lately, some breweries are turning to renewable sources like solar and wind to power their facilities, cutting down on costs and leaving a smaller footprint. The trend is most popular among smaller breweries that focus on craft beers, but even big companies have been going green in the past few years, including, according to Greenbiz, brew giant Budweiser.

In this gallery, you can check out five breweries around the US that use solar power and solar hot water. We can all drink to that.

BMW goes solar at its Zentrum Museum in South Carolina

2012-02-13T13:04:00Z

Filed under: Emerging Technologies, Solar, BMW

BMW says its Zentrum Museum in Greenville, SC, is now fully solar powered and includes three electric-vehicle charging stations, marking the German automaker's continued efforts to boost its green credibility.

With help from Southern Energy Management, BMW spent $500,000 to install 400 solar panels that produce 96 kilowatts of energy, or enough to power the half-acre museum and charging stations. The installation is part of a broader effort by BMW to cut its carbon footprint through initiatives that include factory-efficiency improvements and a hydrogen-storage center.

The German automaker is looking to make strides through plant improvements and vehicle electrification. BMW last month recently started offering leases on its Active E electric vehicle in the U.S. That car is launching in markets such as Los Angeles, New York and Boston, and can be leased for $499 a month with a $2,250 down payment.

The company also joins automakers like Ford Motor Co. and General Motors that have made efforts to cut waste and energy usage at their facilities. Ford Motor Co. said late last month that it planned to reduce landfill waste from its Europe plants by 70 percent and cut water use by 30 percent within five years. And General Motors said last month in its first sustainability report since emerging from bankruptcy in 2009 that more than 80 of its factories produce no landfill materials.

Continue reading BMW goes solar at its Zentrum Museum in South Carolina

BMW goes solar at its Zentrum Museum in South Carolina originally appeared on AutoblogGreen on Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Solar Shades Transit Agency From Energy Costs

2012-02-12T13:00:37Z

Forget shade trees and rusty aluminum carports. The bus fleet of the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA), in California, is going to be cooling its engines in style—in the shade of some serious solar canopies. VTA has installed solar parking canopy systems supporting 5,070 SunPower 425-watt high-efficiency solar panels at three of its bus maintenance sites. The systems, which have a combined capacity of 2.1 megawatt (MW), are expected to save VTA $2.7 million in electricity costs over the next 20 years.

Two of the solar installations are located at the VTA’s San Jose facilities, including a 548-kilowatt (kW) system at its Chaboya Division and a 969-kW system at its Cerone Division. The third installation is a 637-kW system at the VTA North Division facility in Mountain View.

image via Santa Clara Valley Transit Authority

The project was made possible by a partnership with SunPower and Wells Fargo, which financed the systems. SunPower will maintain and operate the PV systems over the terms of VTA’s 20-year power purchase agreement. The power produced will offset the electricity demand of VTA’s three bus maintenance facilities, and more than 2,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year.

VTA is responsible for bus, light rail and para-transit operations in municipalities including Los Altos, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Jose and Santa Clara, among others. The solar parking canopy project fits into the broader goals of VTA’s sustainability program, which outlines the organization’s commitment to the conservation of natural resources, reduction of greenhouse gases, prevention of pollution and the use of renewable energy and materials.

Solar Energy Use on the Rise

2012-02-11T14:00:00Z

The amount of electricity produced via rooftop solar panels in Los Angeles nearly tripled over the past two years, putting it within striking distance of San Diego, which is California's biggest solar-electricity producer.

As of September, Los Angeles has 4,018 rooftop solar installations, second to San Diego's 4,507, according to a report by Environment California, released last week.

San Jose, Fresno and San Francisco rounded out the state's top five solar electricity producers.

The maximum output in Los Angeles is 36 megawatts, slightly less than San Diego's 37 megawatts, according to Environment California.

Electrical current is measured in megawatts (a million watts) and kilowatts (1,000 watts), and usage is measured in kilowatt-hours or 1,000 watts per hour.

An average American household uses about 10,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity over the course of a year.

Los Angeles nearly tripled the amount of rooftop solar energy in the last two years to surge to the No. 2 spot in California, the report said. Per capita, however, only about one in 1,000 Angelenos have rooftop photovoltaic panels.

"If the city of Los Angeles achieved the same levels of solar penetration as Santa Cruz and Chico, it would have more than 50,000 solar rooftops and 400 MW of solar power," the report said.

Germany now gets about 4 percent of its electricity from solar panels, thanks largely to a government incentive program that has helped create about 100,000 jobs over the past decade.

Earlier: California Ranked No. 1 for Solar Jobs

Solar-Powered Mushroom Farm Pops Up In PA

2012-02-10T15:00:23Z

Sun isn’t typically one of the main ingredients needed to grow mushrooms, but on a commercial scale it actually does take a lot of energy. And that’s why Marlboro Mushrooms has installed nearly 5,000 solar panels—capable of putting at 1.13 megawatts of energy—at its family mushroom farm in West Grove, Pennsylvania.

Marlboro Mushrooms is said to be one of the only solar-powered mushroom farms in the world, and the oldest mushroom farm in the nation. The farm is owned by brothers Tom and Harold Brosius, the sixth-generation of farmers who’ve been growing crops on the same piece of property since 1835. The farm produces about 4 million pounds of mushrooms a year that are shipped as far as California and Florida.

image via Marlboro Mushrooms

The brothers are banking on the use of renewable energy sources like solar power to help them offset the majority of their energy costs for decades to come. They anticipate the solar arrays, which are spread across seven acres of the farm, to provide a more sustainable and and environmentally friendly business model. The array, installed by Southern Energy Management, uses a specialized tracking system outfitted with GPS technology to ensure the modules are always tracking the sun.

“Keeping mushroom crops in a controlled environment requires a tremendous amount of electricity to maintain optimal growing conditions, and we thought it was a natural step to use solar power to shoulder some of that load,” Tom Brosius said in a statement. “It is great to harvest the sun’s power and take advantage of a renewable resource. We anticipate it will generate 100 percent of our annual electric needs.”

Construction of the ground-mounted solar array went up in almost no time. Crews started work on the installation in late August and had the entire system on line by the end of November, a full three weeks ahead of schedule. The Marlboro Mushrooms array is also the largest moving solar array in Pennsylvania.