- Porsche Deploys Solar Power System in the U.S.
- Toronto Parking Authority Goes Green With Grid-Tie Solar Power System
- More states want solar power to be option on new homes
- LED Grow Lights
- Businesses Warm to LED Lighting
- L.A. County maps existing, potential solar power systems
Porsche Deploys Solar Power System in the U.S.
March 20, 2009
Porsche Cars North America (PCNA) has unveiled the deployment of its first solar-power system in the U.S. at the Porsche Logistics LLC facility in Ontario, California. Ontario Mayer Paul S. Leon, along with representatives from HelioPower and Sharp Solar Energy Solutions Group were present for the opening ceremony.
Representing one of the more significant solar installations in the Ontario metro area, the PCNA system, a HelioPower 80-kV solar power array with 372 Sharp solar modules, will produce 135,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of renewable electricity annually.
The new solar panel installation will receive the Inland Empire’s Green Valley Initiative (GVI) award, which is said to be the first “Certificate of Recognition” for environmentally sound projects in the region. GVI is a cooperative effort between stakeholders throughout San Bernardino and Riverside counties that encourage the growth of local green technologies and businesses.
However, Porsche isn’t the only luxury maker going solar. Earlier this year, Ferrari unveiled a new solar panel system that will cut annual power usage by 210,000 kilowatt-hours at its facility in Maranello, Italy.
Sources from: http://www.environmentalleader.com/2009/03/20
Toronto Parking Authority Goes Green With Grid-Tie Solar Power System
March 12, 2009
VICTORIA, BC - As part of an ongoing renewable energy initiative, the Toronto Parking Authority (TPA) in Ontario, Canada is installing a solar powered grid-tie system from Carmanah Technologies Corporation (TSX: CMH). Valued at approximately $248,000, the wall mounted grid-tie system will generate electricity from the sun's energy to help power the TPA facility, reducing the facility's reliance on the Toronto Hydro distribution system while helping to control energy expenses. To help offset the capital expenditure of the upgrade, the integrated solar power system will also generate revenue through a contract with the Ontario Power Authority's Renewable Energy Standard Offer Program (RESOP).
Based in Victoria, BC, Carmanah Technologies is a leading provider of solar power systems for grid-tie applications across Canada. Other recent grid-tie applications include a 5 kW system on a new Canadian Tire store in Welland, Ontario, and a 108 kW system on the new Jean Canfield Government Building in Prince Edward Island -- named Canada's 2008 Solar Project of the Year by the Canadian Solar Industries Association (CanSIA).
Sources from: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29660356/
More states want solar power to be option on new homes
Apr 6, 2009
A growing number of states are moving to require home builders to offer solar electricity and hot-water systems in new homes, right alongside more traditional options such as fancy kitchen countertops and special window treatments.
"It's just like the granite countertop upgrade or the two-car garage or the larger closet — these are options the homeowner can choose to purchase," said Jeff Lyng, the renewable energy program manager for Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter's Energy Office.
In Colorado, lawmakers are considering a bill that would require builders to offer a range of options, from pre-wiring the home for solar power to full installation of a solar system. The legislation would also require builders to tell buyers they can roll the cost of the system into their mortgage, reducing up-front costs, Lyng said.
"What this begins to do is standardize things. We're trying to build Colorado's infrastructure to be ready for solar," Lyng said.
The Colorado proposal has passed in the state House and awaits Senate consideration. Ritter, a Democrat who had solar panels installed at the Governor's Mansion in Denver several years ago, said he plans to sign the bill
Sources from: http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/
2009-04-06-solar-ready_N.htm
April 4, 2009
Plants know what they want from bonafide sunshine.
Every spectrum of light they require to perform each task necessary is present in nature. Indoor gardening is completely different. You must depend on your grow lights to substitute the spectrums your crop needs to not only thrive but to perform at optimum levels. Inside your grow room, you need to offer your plants pseudo sunshine psychology.
Your improvised sunlight must be effective and economical.
Traditional HID grow lights are expensive to purchase and an astronomical energy eating form of sunshine. Green living and growing go hand in hand. You want safer food to eat at the same time as you are trying to lessen your carbon footprint. Both must be done at a price that is affordable for you to maintain.
Owning grow lights is one thing.
The price of your grow lights is just the beginning of the out of pocket costs. Keeping them running and the electrical bill paid in full is another. Lighting for any purpose isn’t inexpensive and grow lights can really run up a hefty purchase ticket total. You want the best harvest for the least amount of money invested. While you are researching how much grow light fixtures cost, you should also be recording the output of useable spectrum.
Your plants do not use all of the light spectrums provided by HID lamps.
In essence, you are paying for wasted lumen wattage, and a lot of excess cooling used to maintain your pseudo sun brilliance. LED lighting is the grow light choice of the future. It uses 80% less electricity and emits exactly the spectrum your crop needs at each step of its life.
Blue for stem and foliage growth
Orange for fruit production
Red for flowering
LED lights remain cool and keeping temperatures from excess in your grow tent.
And LED light fixture with 90 watts actually exceeds the growing light output of a 400-watt metal halide or HPS lamp. Additionally, the diodes in and LED grow light fixture can last for up to 100,000 hours. That’s over 5,550 consecutive 18-hour days.
Can your grow lamp bulb last for over 15 years of never ending 18-hour days?
LED grow light fixtures are not cheap. It is not just the cost of the equipment purchase you should be calculating in your budget for indoor gardening. If your grow room lights cost you $20 a month to run with traditional lamps, It means lessening just the light expenditure by $16 a month. Plus the cost of reducing the lamp inflated temperature in your indoor garden.
Fans are not free to operate to maintain the grow room temps just right.
The added cost of cooling will greatly depend on the size of your lights and the size of your hydroponic growing space. Using an average ratio, your exhaust fans are using $5 about per month to get rid of the heat created by your old technology lamps. LED lights are 90% cooler to operate. This would reduce your energy usage by another $4 per month.
You can be a greener indoor gardener as well as one with a lower cost of growing.
Making less of a carbon footprint is important. Saving money is necessary. If your current lighting is running you a maintenance cost of $25 a month for power, an LED grow light fixture system could save you $20 a month. That’s $240 a year and you won’t have to replace any bulbs for at least 15 years.
Money to startup versus cash to continue is important.
Greenbacks are not as green as the planet should be. Wasting money is not wise, no matter how you look at the scenario. LED lights cost more up front and offer you far more green for the long haul.
Sources from: http://www.lightsgrow.com/indoor-growing/growing-with-led-lights0159.html
Businesses Warm to LED Lighting
April 29, 2009
THE architect Cass Gilbert’s vision for the United States Custom House in Lower Manhattan resulted in one of the city’s grand classical buildings. But until recently it has been difficult to appreciate the subtlety and majesty of the 102-year-old structure when viewing it at night.
At its base, huge fixtures produced scattered light that cast strong shadows on the windows, giving the facade the tired look of an insomniac. Aging light bulbs had shifted in color, throwing off an unwanted rainbow of green and pink.
“The lighting was atrocious,” said Patricia DiMaggio, who noticed the poor illumination when walking by the building. “It wasn’t doing the job.”
Unlike most passers-by, Ms. DiMaggio was prepared to take action. A lighting engineer for Osram Sylvania, she was introduced to the right people at the federal General Services Administration. Donating time and material, Ms. DiMaggio promised to relight the building both to restore its grandeur and save energy.
Combining warm-hued LED and metal-halide fixtures, Ms. DiMaggio lighted previously dark areas of the building and removed unsightly shadows cast by aging traditional lamps.
“One person said, ‘I feel like I’m in Paris when I walk by the building,’ ” Ms. DiMaggio recalled.
Using LED-based fixtures, Ms. DiMaggio said, she cut energy consumption for lighting by 43 percent, saving $6,654 a year. With an expected life of 50,000 hours, compared with the 2,000 hours typical of incandescent bulbs, the lights have also lowered maintenance costs.
Although they have yet to substantially influence the residential lighting market, light-emitting diode lamps are increasingly being introduced in commercial buildings. Manufacturers are creating lamps that are reliable, color-accurate and at least as efficient as incandescent or compact fluorescent lights.
LED fixtures still cost more than conventional ones, but the energy savings can help commercial projects to pay for themselves in as little as two years.
That said, the quickly evolving technology is still in its early stages. “In 2006, I had a really hard time to light well with just LEDs,” said Brad Koerner, a designer at Lam Partners, a Cambridge, Mass., lighting firm. “By 2008, there was no longer any problem.”
Mr. Koerner oversaw the relighting of Boston’s Custom House Tower, which is now a Marriott hotel. The building’s lighting had fallen into disrepair over the last 20 years, with much of the upper half remaining in darkness.
Mr. Koerner installed LED-based fixtures from Philips’s Color Kinetics division that resemble warm incandescent bulbs. He replaced the 90-watt halogen bulbs with 50-watt LED fixtures, cutting energy use in half.
“Every month LEDs get so much better it’s amazing,” Mr. Koerner said. “It’s changing that quickly.”
While Derry Berrigan, owner of Derry Berrigan Lighting Design in Rogers, Ark., is using LEDs, she said much of what was currently sold was “pure junk. It’s like the Wild West.”
Seeking out high-quality products, Ms. Berrigan used fixtures from Cree and Insight Lighting to relight a prototype KFC and Taco Bell restaurant in Northampton, Mass.
She placed LEDs in the interior, reducing energy consumption by 81 percent, while LEDs outside saved 77 percent. Installing LED parking lot fixtures, which spread wider beams than conventional lighting, allowed Ms. Berrigan to remove two poles.
Costs can even be cut when a building is receiving its energy off the grid. At the Chicago Center for Green Technology, which uses solar energy, Ms. Berrigan used LED track lighting from Journée Lighting in Westlake Village, Calif., to illuminate the walls in its resource center, along with fixtures from Color Kinetics, Cree, Insight and other companies to provide general illumination.
With a resulting 64 percent drop in energy use for lighting, 47 of the center’s 200 solar panels could provide electricity for purposes other than illumination.
LEDs can also create a look that would otherwise be unachievable. Focus Lighting, based in New York, illuminated Rock Sugar Pan Asian Kitchen, a restaurant prototype in Los Angeles owned by the Cheesecake Factory chain.
Faced with lighting rooms with 25- to 30-foot ceilings and intimate bar and dining areas, Christine Hope, Focus’s designer, said, “LEDs were the perfect solution.”
Fixtures included LED strips behind the bar and, in cubbyholes, dozens of candlelike LEDs using just one to three watts per unit. That “would have been impossible to do with incandescents,” Ms. Hope said.
Color-changing LEDs programmed to cycle through the hues of dawn to dusk were placed behind large Buddhas. LED lights drawing three or six watts were installed in 25 globes in the courtyard.
Needing omnidirectional light in the dining room, Ms. Hope used compact fluorescent bulbs in three fixtures, their yellow shades providing the proper color for the room.
The LEDs reduced energy consumption by at least half compared with traditional incandescent and halogen bulbs, Ms. Hope said. “This restaurant is such a great example of what you can achieve with LEDs,” she said.
L.A. County maps existing, potential solar power systems
- Apr 28, 2009
Los Angeles County has created a solar map of the jurisdiction so officials and residents can now check the solar potential of government rooftops and view all solar photovoltaic installations in the area, including residential, commercial and government buildings. The map also shows solar installations by ZIP code.
Denver-based CH2M HILL has created 3-D models for the county municipal buildings. Using these models and aerial imagery, the company’s technology estimates the solar potential of a rooftop by measuring the elements of a rooftop structure, the direction of the sun, shadows cast by other structures and the slope of the roof.
The county has mapped 1,100 municipal buildings there, and the mapping will speed implementation of future county solar installations, said David Herrmann, client solutions director, CH2M HILL’s Enterprise Management Solutions, provider of the technology.
"As a major electricity user, with facilities spread across a wide geography, L.A. County is a natural testbed for the implementation of solar energy systems,” said Howard Choy, the county's energy division manager.
Because of the level of detail of the map, it will reduce the need for on-site assessments -- solar installers don't have to visit every roof to see if it can support solar, saving time and money. officials said.
The project began in January, with the ultimate goal being a “one-stop solar shop” for residents and businesses. a single location for information to help aggregate potential solar projects into a larger, single county-funded program.
Sources from: http://gcn.com/articles/2009/04/28/la-county-solar-maps.aspx
