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Calif. Acute-Care Hospital Goes Solar

AUBURN, Calif. — Sutter Auburn Faith Hospital announced that nearly half of its electricity is now solar, making it the first acute-care facility in the state of California to have a large portion of its energy demands met by two 3,000 panel solar array hosted by the hospital.

With a combined capacity of 700 kilowatts, the two systems, expected to generate more than 1 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year. The solar arrays are also designed so they will also provide protective covering for 150 employee parking spaces, additional shade, and reduce air conditioning costs.

The solar system, installed by SPG Solar, based in Novato, Calif., will offset more than 11,600 metric tons of carbon dioxide over 25 years, the equivalent to removing more than 2,500 automobiles off the road for one year, according to reports.

The solar power system was financed by SunEdison, North America’s largest solar energy services provider, which will own and operate the system.

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Veterans’ Hospitals Go Solar

The Jerry L. Pettis Memorial Medical Center in Loma Linda, Calif.

WASHINGTON — Ten veterans’ hospitals will soon be saving thousands of dollars annually in electricity costs thanks in part to solar system installations.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs recently awarded a $7.8 million contract to SunWize Technologies of Kingston, N.Y. to install the photovoltaic systems. The systems will range from 50 kW to 400 kW systems, all 10 of which will total 1.1 MW in photovoltaic power.

Federal government agencies are under executive order to increase energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 3 percent a year, for a total of 30 percent by the end of 2015. In response to the mandate, the VA developed a comprehensive, department-wide energy management plan and surveyed its major facilities for their renewable energy potential.

"Medical facilities use a huge amount of energy, and solar is being widely adopted as a solution to that problem," says Paul Garvison, vice president of SunWize’s residential and commercial power systems division.

The VA hospitals, located in Albany, Buffalo and Syracuse, N.Y.; Cheyenne, Wyo.; Phoenix; Vallejo, Calif.; two facilities in Sacramento, Calif.; Honolulu; and Pago Pago, American Samoa, will utilize SANYO 210 watt N-Series modules, coupled with either Satcon or Fronius inverters, and will include a mix of rooftop and carport solar panels.

In 2009, SunWize, a firm with an 18-year history of manufacturing and installing photovoltaic systems, placed a 337-kilowatt DC solar electric system on top of the Dallas VA Medical Center. In 2008, the company completed a 309-kilowatt system at the Jerry L. Pettis Memorial Medical Center in Loma Linda, Calif.

The Dallas VA hospital installation, called the largest photovoltaic installation in Texas at the time, is expected to save the facility more than $62,000 in annual electricity costs.

Those two initial projects laid the groundwork and supplied the experience for SunWize’s current agenda, according to Matt Ziskin, director of marketing and strategic project business development at the company.

"In the previous projects we gained expertise on how to work with the VA hospitals, how to adhere to their standards, and what needs to be done to keep those facilities operating throughout the life of the project," Ziskin says.

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Donated Solar Arrays Power Haiti Clinics

Photos courtesy of Robert Freling.

BOUCAN CARRE, Haiti — The Solar Electric Light Fund, an international nonprofit organization that delivers sustainable energy solutions to the developing world, is working to outfit a portion of Haiti’s health clinics with solar power in an effort to create sustainable buildings and lessen environmental impacts.

In collaboration with another global nonprofit, Partners In Health, SELF plans to establish solar systems at five PIH hospitals within the next six to eight months. PIH, based in Boston, Mass., presently operates 12 medical facilities in and around Haiti’s central plateau.

In the remote highlands of Haiti, electricity is a luxury. The majority of buildings operate off the grid in the central plateau region, using gas generators instead to supply power. Largely undamaged by the January 2010 earthquake, Haiti’s central plateau has experienced a rise in demand for healthcare services as Haitians return to their home villages from nearby Port au Prince, where the bulk of the quake damage occurred. The trend has put a strain on the fuel supply of the region’s clinics.

SELF, based in Washington, D.C., has already built solar arrays at three of PIH clinics, including in Boucan Carre, where workers installed a 10-kilowatt solar-diesel hybrid system in September 2009. PIH reports monthly fuel costs at the Boucan Carre clinic have since dropped by 64 percent.

“These systems are going to make the hospitals more sustainable, more reliable and ultimately cheaper to run,” says SELF’s Executive Director Robert Freling. “Solar is more expensive initially, but over time these clinics will actually save money because they won’t have to keep buying diesel fuel month in and month out, year in and year out.

“Solar is also much less vulnerable to disruption,” Freling added. “If you’ve got diesel generators, you have always got to worry about the supply chain of diesel and the difficulty of transporting and paying for the fuel. With solar, that becomes a non-issue.”

A recent gift from photovoltaic panel manufacturer SolarWorld, based in Hillsboro, Ore., will make the installation at the five clinics possible. As part of their “Solar2World” program, the company donated 100 kilowatts in solar panels to the Haiti project.

That donation, along with gifts of five power centers, inverters and controllers from OutBack Power in Arlington, Wash., and a $500,000 grant from the Palo Alto, Calif.,-based environmental advocacy group, 11th Hour Project, will make it possible for SELF to install up to 20-kilowatt solar systems at each of the five hospitals.

Other partners on the project include Trojan Battery Company and Deka Batteries, which are donating energy storage batteries for two clinics.

“For the first phase, we’ll install 100 kilowatts,” Freling says. “We will be looking to do more than that though in the future. The need is tremendous in Haiti. I’d like to install a couple of megawatts in the future – that’s what they need is megawatts upon megawatts of power. There is a huge opportunity to help rebuild the county with solar power.”

Freling expects construction to begin this October on the first of the five clinics. In addition to building the systems, SELF will train employees in the maintenance and operation of the solar arrays.

SELF is currently working in about 20 countries worldwide with an expanded presence in sub-Saharan Africa.

“Our organization is growing, our projects are growing, and the scale of our installations are growing,” Freling says. “We’ve never done single 20-kilowatt installations before, like what we’re doing now with PIH.

“Our mission has also evolved over the years,” he added. “In the past, we were primarily installing solar home lighting systems. Now we are outfitting entire villages, installing solar for everything from water-pumping and irrigation to household electrification and the powering of schools and clinics.”

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Q&A: Integrated Solar

Marty Low is CEO of SRS Energy, a Philadelphia-based developer of integrated solar roofing products that provide renewable energy while serving the structure functionally and aesthetically. SRS Energy provides the material but not the manpower to complete the installation. In such cases, if you’re purchasing the solar roofing from Round Rock in Texas, you may want to do a quick search for roofing companies Round Rock to get yourself started.

The companys Sole Power tile is designed to blend with several styles of the US Tile Co.s clay roofing tiles, eliminating the need for obtrusive solar arrays. The product has earned a number of accolades from various industry publications, and it was the recipient of the 2010 Edison Best New Product award for industrial design. Low spoke with Green Building News during a phone interview.

Q: Do you thing integrated photovoltaics are a future trend in the solar industry?

A: Yes, integrated photovoltaics usually are implemented in new construction, and if you talk to many roofing companies, like CB Chandler Roofing, they likely think that building integrated will be the wave of the future.

Solar companies that just sell technology or solar panels will eventually create products that become part of the roof products that will be much more integrated into the building envelope then they are currently. I would imagine in 10 to 15 years, the majority of solar installed will be in some kind of integrated form.

Q: What are some of the benefits and disadvantages of the integrated solar systems versus bracketed systems?

A: Right now, if you have a commercial flat roof, from somewhere like Lidoran, and there’s no issue of aesthetics because people cant see it, costs per watt to install a bracketed system is going to be lower. Theres a disadvantage to using a fully integrated solution if the purchaser is only concerned about how much power they can get out of the system for how much money.

If the building owner is concerned at all about aesthetics, they might tend toward a building integrated solution. Some integrated solutions basically feign or imitate the rooftop but truly arent designed and built in such a way that they are supposed to last for 20 or 30 years, and commercial properties who have these imitation solutions may find themselves in need of a commercial roof repair service in the future. Something unique about our product is that it is a roofing product first and solar product second.

Q: How do bracketed and integrated systems compare in the amount of energy they are able to produce?

A: That can be seen as a disadvantage to integrated photovoltaics. There are different kinds of solar technology out there. Crystalline silicon, which is typically what they put in the bracketed modules, is a brittle material that can only be encased in glass, which means it has to be flat. Amorphous silicon is flexible and can be encased in a flexible laminate and bent.

The amorphous silicon is less efficient than the crystalline silicon is in terms of a rated watt output. What that means is if I want to put up a certain sized system, I will need more of the amorphous silicon then I will need of the crystallized silicon to create the same output. So our disadvantage, to some extent, is that it requires more roof space because the efficiency of the building to generate power per square foot with amorphous is less than if it used crystalline.

But, while the rated capacity of crystalline is better, the actual production per rated capacity is actual better with amorphous. If I install a 5-kilowatt system with crystalline and 5-kilowatt system with amorphous, in terms of how much electricity I will produce at the end of the day, the amorphous is better because it captures diffused light better. In places where its cloudy, amorphous will perform better. Also, in places where its hotter, amorphous performs better than crystalline.

Q: How do you make your integrated products made as durable as standard roofing products?

A: We start with a roofing material that will last on the roof for 20 or 30 years and we have a technology that enables us to integrate the amorphous silicon into that roofing profile. At the end of the day, you have a roof that lasts and a product generates solar power. We dont imply that the solar technology alone is adequate to protect the roof. We actually have a polymer substrate that enables it to perform that function.

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