All About Solar | Green Energy News

August 27, 2006 – Vol.11 No.23

ALL ABOUT SOLAR.

This week’s news.

Germany is the world’s leader in wind power. The country has more than 18,000 megawatts installed; almost as much as second and third place contenders, Spain and the US, combined.

The race to first place began with the country’s dedication and support of wind energy as well as an outreach to farmers. Farmers were told correctly that the air above their fields could be harvested for energy while the fields were still harvested for crops.

(The same outreach is now being made to US farmers and it’s working here too. The nation’s breadbasket - the center Plains States - are evolving into the nation’s wind powerhouse.)

But wind power is not for everyone. Often where there are windy croplands there are also communities that don’t want towering turbines casting shadows over their towns.

Fortunately, where farms and communities are neighbors, energy can still be harvested above fields by installing solar arrays mounted on pedestals. Those pedestals are raised high enough to allow the area beneath to be tilled or for shade for grazing animals, but not so high as to be considered a fixture on the horizon.

The 12-megawatt Gut Erlasse Solar Park in Bavaria, Germany - the largest tracking solar photovoltaic powerplant in the world - is built that way. Solar arrays and tracking devices are mounted above a working agricultural field. Those tracking devices at Gut Erlasse are known as Movers and are supplied by German company Solon, which recently dedicated the project.

The Solon Movers tilt and rotate throughout the day to directly face the Sun. On a square foot basis the Movers can generate up to twice the annual solar electric capacity than conventional fixed solar arrays. And cows, of course, can snooze underneath.

SunPower of San Jose, California supplied solar cells to about a third of the Movers at Gut Erlasse and since the SunPower A-300 cells are more efficient than other cells used in the project, the company’s cells generate a higher proportion of energy at the facility.

Visit SunPower at http://www.sunpowercorp.com/ and Solon at http://www.solonmover.com/

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed into law an expansion of the state’s Solar Initiative aimed at putting one million solar systems on roofs by 2018. The initiative now says the state’s municipal utilities, such the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) and the Sacramento Municipal Utilities Division (SMUD), will be included along with major private utilities in the program.

Further, the initiative also now says that beginning in January 2011 developers of more than 50 new single family homes must offer a solar energy system alternative to all customers.

At least one California developer is five years ahead of the new law.

BLU S.K.Y. homes is including solar systems on up to 300 homes in the Juliana’s Garden neighborhood in the master-planned community of City of the Hills in Bakersfield, California.

The solar systems, to be supplied by Sharp Solar, range from 1.7 to 3.5 kilowatts depending on the size of the home. The solar systems will be grid-connected and supply a portion of each home’s electrical needs. The homes also include low wattage and motion sensing lighting to reduce power consumption.

Installation of solar systems will be by Renewable Energy Concepts. Visit them at http://recsolar.com/ and visit Sharp Solar at http://www.sharpusa.com/solar