Solar States Blog

When the eggheads at Princeton University set out to put solar panels on the roof of the building that houses the Research Collections and Preservation Consortium, the project looked doomed to fail. After all, Tom Nyquist, Princeton’s director of facilities engineering says that the array will not produce enough to power the building and that the costs will be considerable. But the project looks like a smarter long-term investment as it launches Princeton into the world of SREC’s.

SREC’s, or Solar Renewable Energy Credits, are units of produced power. Each time a solar electric system generates 1,000 kwh of electricity, the project’s investor–in this case, Pennsylvania Power & Light–can then sell or trade the SREC’s. As power is being pumped back into the electricity grid, Princeton is effectively renting their roof space to Pennsylvania Power and Light in exchange for reduced energy bills. The result is a fully functional and sustainable power system with no upfront costs to Princeton.

Solar Ivy

The best part about this system is that solar is the fastest progressing energy technology, increasing in productivity by over 10% per year. So, over the useful life of the array, Princeton will continue to get more bang for their buck until the solar array takes over for their power needs alltogether. And as this technology takes off, the value of SREC’s improves so everybody wins.

You don’t get into the Ivy League without having a few good ideas up your sleeve. And you don’t get to be a permanent fixture at the Princeton library without pulling your weight. If you do your homework, this is a good deal for all involved.

The Amish way of life has learned to live side by side with secular residents in Lancaster County for years, despite differences in the way the two cultures choose to live. But while Lancaster’s newest proposed addition will involve electricity, it shouldn’t ruffle too many Mennonite beards as this improvement is both respectful to the environment and completely silent.

Suburban Philadelphia’s Community Energy unveiled plans this week to build a $20 million solar array on 40 acres of farmland in East Drumore Township, Lancaster County. The solar farm would generate enough electricity to power 900 homes using nothing but the sun.

Amish ingenuity to use natural resources to create energy is at the heart of this simple innovation. And with the productivity of solar panels increasing everyday, it is likely 900 homes is a conservative estimate over the 25-year lifespan of the array.

The success of this plant will create construction jobs and help diversify the state’s coal-heavy energy portfolio. Keep it here for updates on this and other projects around the state.

As Solar States founder Micah Gold-Markel continues the fight to bring solar energy to Philadelphia, Solar States is bringing some new voices to the conversation. This month, Solar States is hosting monthly investor salons to talk to alternative energy investors and venture capitalists about the state of the alternative energy marketplace and what it will take to make the solar dream a reality in Philadelphia.

Solar States would also like to bring you in on the conversation. That’s why we will be video taping these meetings and taking your comments on the Solar States blog. These videos will start to appear on the blog in early December, after the first Salon takes place. Keep all eyes glued here for more information on these exciting investment meetings.

On today’s This Week In Duh, we ring our own bell a little bit; toot our own horn; scratch our own back, if you will. This partnership we have created is so brilliant, we just have to shout about it. I mean, who would have thought that an environmental education center would partner with a solar environmental education and install company? Please, hold your applause until the end.

Ok, so maybe our networking isn’t totally brilliant, but this partnership may be. For our part, we are just happy these guys would work with us. The Schuylkill Center has been around nearly 25 years, educating the educators, the nature buffs and the regular city dwellers here in Philadelphia on the wonders of nature, and how to keep it as wondrous as possible. As one of the oldest environmental education centers in the country, we feel their experience and dedication is the best foothold for our solar education programs.

This month, Solar States helps lead a two-day teacher workshop on solar energy. Participants will work with industry experts, learning about the grant and incentive programs that will bring solar technology to the forefront of Pennsylvania’s energy portfolio. Teachers attending the program will receive lesson plans that use solar energy in science, math, social studies and civics classes. Participants also receive a $50 stipend, 11 ACT 48 credit hours, a free pyranometer or multimeter, and small PV cells to use in the classroom.

Some things were just made to be together: peanut butter and jelly, cookies and milk, a 130-watt solar panel and a 250-watt, grid-tied inverter. If you don’t get that joke and you would like to, check out more information here. If you have some duh-inducing technology news of your own, e-mail me at john@solar-states.com. 

Solar States is at it again! With students at the Science Leadership Academy finishing up another great semester of solar design and photovoltaic research, we thought long and hard about what our next step should be in bringing solar education and industry to the Philadelphia area. But in the end, it came down to one simple question: what comes after high school?

College. And in college, the first classes you take are the intro classes, the 101 classes, with names like “Intro to Psychology” and “History of Early America.” This is Green Energy 101.

GREEN BY EXAMPLE is our newest course, teaching you the basics of LEED certification, weatherization, solar and other groundbreaking innovations. Taught by LEED expert Sam Klein (LEED For Homes Quality Assurance Designee), GREEN BY EXAMPLE can show you the investments you should consider and the ones you need to make in order to become LEED certified or just save your family a few bucks. And with guest speakers from the Philly solar and green building communities, we are making sure you are getting the most up-to-date information.

Before Philadelphia students and prospective installers can get on a roof and install solar panels, they have to understand the basics of home and commercial energy. There are natural, creative ways to plug the energy leaks that are harming your environment and draining your wallet. Come learn about them.

And even if you are afraid of heights; even if you can’t tell an inverter from a ballast mount; even if you have no interest in solar at all, wouldn’t you like to know how to stop your house from hemorrhaging energy and costing you a fortune? Get your prerequisite energy knowledge out of the way with Green By Example.

Ok Sales Pitch over. Thanks for your interest in our mission and if you are interested in signing up, we will see you in class!

GREEN BY EXAMPLE: An introduction to Alternative Energy, Weatherization and LEED For Homes

When: Saturday, June 6th, 2009 / Saturday, June 13th, 2009 / Saturday, June 20th, 2009 / Saturday, June 27th, 2009

Where: Northern Liberties Community Center, 700 N. 3rd Street (at the corner of 3rd and Fairmount Sts.)

Time: 9:30am-12:30pm

Cost: $350 for the entire 4-week program. There are 5 spots available to low-income participants.

The experimenting has died down in a sense because everyone is getting ready to go on Winter Break. Currently, we are planning on doing further experiments relating to our sunlight angles. After break, we will more than likely redo the Clinometers experiments if we need better accuracy, or try another form of experiment if need be.

After performing our sunlight angle experiment with the Clinometers (I found out the proper name for them), we found the average sunlight angles. The average angle that sunlight hits our school from the West is 20°. The average angle East of our school is 30°. Using this data, we will know effective angles to set up solar panels on our schools roof so that we can potentially collect as much energy/power/electricity as possible to help towards making our school Green in the future.

We have come to an agreement in class on what type of experiment to perform. In order to find the sunlight angles, we will be doing an experiment based on our 9th grade Geometry projects. We will have a viewing tube attached to protractors with sting and weights. As we look up to see the tops of the buildings where sunlight, the weight will pull the string down and show us the angle at which sunlight hits our school. Each group will have their own viewing/angle device and use it to find the sunlight angles at several different points to get an average sunlight angle in the polar directions, east and west from our school.

We’ve done a lot since I’ve last spilled my brain leakage into the internet database to be processed around the globe by possibly millions of viewers, or maybe just one who gets bored enough to take a gander in this direction. As a class, last time I posted, we had decided to divvy ourselves into groups based on who wanted to test what. I had the pleasure of only having one other group member interested in the efficiency the solar cells produced, and was glad to have him as he kept out of my way mostly. Sure, I had him help when he was needed, or to at least make him available to receive credit, but all in all we kept our distance from each other. I’m a lone worker, and I don’t like to be disturbed, built upon the belief that other people usually get in the way.

I got bored of testing the amount of light covered in an area by the ceiling lights and comparing it to the amount of energy the solar cell. So I packed every up and stacked the equipment away back to the confines of boxes. I stumbled over to where a group was working feverishly to wire the solar cells in series. My partner soon joined with me and we gave our two cents.

The group we just joined was working on making the solar cells produce more voltage and amps, and were supposed to be looking at the effects of wiring in series, parallel, and both. We began stripping wires with scissors and pliers, and then tying the blue to the red. I broke a few with my clumsy hands, but we managed to wire them, after about the whole class period, in series. Ironically when we took data on the voltage, no one decided to actually record it, so all our data taken was lost and in vain. Our group did the same thing when we tested for wiring in parallel, and in both series and parallel, the amperage/voltage we recorded was lost and forgotten.

Afterwords, student interviews were done by some corporation whose name slips my mind. I was selected, but by the time I worked up the nerve to go through interrogation, the time was up, and they had moved out. I know one girl kept saying her interview was bad, and VanK and I kept reassuring her. Some people just can’t accept that they are able to do things well. After this passed, we turned ourselves onto a new topic: Tracking the sun. After much class discussion of how we would go about such a feat, and VanKouwenberg constantly taunting us with the notion of a “simple” way to do it, we turned ourselves to researching the topic. I didn’t really know what I was looking for, but I heard a few kids already shouting the answers, so I click-clacked on my keyboard the name of the device and found it much similar to a device I had used in geometry ninth grade year. The device was a protractor, with a hollowed out shaft along the 180º side, and a weighted string attached at the 180º side that ran down the 90º line. As you looked up, the weighted string would tell the angle at which you were looking from the 90º mark, which one could then figure out by taking the difference between 90º and the angle at which the string was located. From there we spent a period actually making them, a few getting done early and actually taking measurements of the sun at the east side of our building. The next time we met up for engineering, we had all spent five minutes adding finishing touches to our devices, and all hurried over to the west side of the building, where as a class we all took measurements pertaining to the angle of the buildings that towered over us from our roof, so that we could calculate the amount of sun we get each day.