Solar Power Efficient Energy | Green Energy News

March 3, 2002 – Vol.6 No.49

SOLAR POWER FOR EFFICIENT ENERGY.

Let’s be honest. Photovoltaic solar power has some faults. It’s relatively expensive. It’s not very efficient. And for the amount of power output, it takes up a lot of real estate.

Certainly solar manufacturers and developers are working on many ways to correct and work around these faults. One of them is to connect solar panels only to highly energy-efficient devices. The more efficient the device, the less solar electricity needs to be generated and overall system cost and size goes down.

This notion is now reality for one Whole Foods Market (tm) natural and organic supermarket in Berkeley, California. A newly installed 33 kilowatt rooftop solar array is used only to power the store’s DC (direct current) fluorescent lighting.

Fluorescent lighting in itself is efficient, but further efficiencies are gained by using the solar panel’s DC current directly to power the lighting. (Typically solar power is converted - at a loss of usable electricity - from DC to AC (alternating current) for use in buildings. This loss is avoided with the Whole Foods installation.)

Reflective roofing materials were also used and the PowerLight solar panels provide additional insulation for the building. The DC lighting system was provided by Nextek Power Systems. Visit PowerLight at http://www.powerlight.com/ , Nextek at http://www.nextekpower.com/ .