City Solar | Green Energy News

October 6, 2002 – Vol.7 No.28

CITY SOLAR.

Look down from the sky upon the top of any city and you’ll see streets, alleys, sidewalks, a smattering of parks and small yards, but mostly you’ll see the roofs of thousands of buildings. The top of a city seems ideal for installation of solar power. Other than occasional clouds there’s little between the top of a city and the sun.

While the homes and apartment buildings in the city use electricity 7 days a week, many commercial and office buildings are closed for the weekend. Two days out of seven - almost one third of the daylight hours in a week - those buildings are, in part, powered down. On those two days solar powerplants on top of these buildings can contribute clean electricity to the grid, or, if they are equipped with energy storage devices, can save the solar electricity that would ordinarily be consumed when the buildings are open for business. Stored solar energy from Saturday and Sunday can be saved for the week ahead and used when it is most needed.

The Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center (GMDC) in Brooklyn, New York is installing a 115-kilowatt rooftop solar system that is both grid connected and independent from it. A zinc-bromide battery backup system stores solar energy generated when the GMDC buildings are closed. Built with co-funding from Clean Air Communities, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and GMDC, the system uses solar panels supplied by PowerLight that cover 11,500 square feet of unused roof space on two GMDC buildings.

GMDC is a non-profit organization that rehabilitates industrial buildings and works to create high-quality blue-collar jobs for low-income New Yorkers. Clean Air Communities’ mission is designed to bring state-of-the-art clean air and energy efficiency technologies to disenfranchised urban communities. ConEdison, the utility company serving the GMDC buildings, which provided the grant money distributed by Clean Air Communities, will use the stored solar electricity to help meet peak demand on weekdays.

Visit PowerLight http://www.powerlight.com/ , Clean Air Communities at http://www.cleanaircommunities.org/ , GMDC at http://www.gmdconline.org/ NYSERDA at http://www.nyserda.org/ and ConEd at http://www.conedison.com/ .