40 KW PV Solar Array on SI Ferry Terminal

While Chinese subsidies of their solar energy industry have decimated the manufacturing base of the American solar industry, solar energy continues to expand across the country.

What if we stimulated the solar industry with a public works program?

What if we decided to deploy a 40 kilowatt photovoltaic solar array on each of the approximately 90,000 public schools in the country?

The best kept secret in NYC may be found on the Staten Island Ferry, or more precisely, on the south roof of the Whitehall Street terminal. It’s a 40 kilowatt photovoltaic solar array.

Taxpayers pay the electric bills of the ferry terminal, which today are much lower because of the energy the system produces. Taxpayers also pay the electric bills of public schools, courts and other municipal, state and federal office buildings – and the externalized costs of pollution and “health effects” related to mining coal and uranium, drilling oil or frakking gas.

I met Senator John Kerry at the Harvey Nash Inc. Leadership Breakfast at the Plaza Hotel in NYC on Friday, March 2, 2012. At the conclusion I asked him to consider an project for the infrastructure bank he wants to create:  a 40 kw photovoltaic solar energy system on each of the approximately 90,000 public schools in the US.

At $5.00 per watt, which is less than the cost of new nuclear and much less than coal with carbon sequestration, these 90,000 systems would cost $18 billion. They would produce electricity without burning fuel, creating wastes, or creating targets for terrorists, and would pay for themselves in eight to 15 years, depending on the market price of electricity. They would also produce energy for 25 to 40 years – paying for themselves several times over.

This kind of a public works project would create jobs. Even if we didn’t mandate that these used products made in American factories, which I think we should, installation and maintenance would have to be local.

It would also lessen our dependence on fossil fuels.

And each solar energy powered building could be designed to generate electricity during the day during an emergency which shuts down the grid, further enhancing our emergency response capability.

  Tweet The few inches of heavy wet snow that fell in October took out power in parts of New Jersey and Connecticut. Millions lost power in the storm. Nine days later 50,000 remain without power in Connecticut. Hundreds are without power New Jersey and Massachusetts. Connecticut Outage map here.  News coverage here: Business Week / NPR / NY Times.

People in New Jersey have installed over 400 MW of nameplate capacity solar. While this is a fraction of the 7.0 GW, or 7,000 MW, of generating capacity needed by the 8 million or so people who reside in New Jersey, and these systems don’t feed the grid when the power is out, let’s do a thought experiment.

Let’s imagine each of the 50,000 in Connecticut who remains without power had a PV solar array. They’d have power during the day. Lets also imagine that microhydro turbines along the Connecticut River, in other rivers, off the shores, and a set of utility scale wind turbines. The result? Power, day and night, without pollution.  Power without the need to mine coal, drill for oil, fracture the ground for methane, or generate tons of radioactive waste.

Lets further postulate 50 MW on each of the public schools, and 1.5 to 5.0 MW on each of the colleges and universities in the state.

In the event of a major outage from a storm like the October Surprise of 2011, or Irene, the schools could be used as emergency shelters with power, during the day when the sun is shining – as it has been since the storm.

And these systems generate power in predictable amounts, with no fuel and no pollution.

An emergency backup power system is only used during an emergency. Solar energy systems are used every day – and so are a more efficient use of capital.

And as the picture above suggests – there’s an interesting feedback pattern when snow falls on a solar array. Solar arrays are pitched to face the sun. Snow is translucent – allows light to pass thru.  The snow covered solar array generates power, which generates heat, which melts the snow, exposing the array to more sunlight – which generates more power.

1.5 MW Solar Array, Rutgers University, Livingston Campus

New Jersey taxpayers could net $36.9 million per year, $369 million over 10 years, with the installation of 152.5 megawatts (MW) of photovoltaic (PV) solar electricity systems on public schools, community colleges, and each of the public universities in the state.

The systems would pay for themselves within the first 8 years. At 2010 values of electricity and Solar Renewable Energy Certificates (SRECs), these systems would generate electricity worth approximately $300 Million and SRECs worth $1.2 Billion over the first 10 years, approximately $369 Million in excess of the cost of the systems, and provide virtually free electricity over the remainder of their 35 to 40 year lifespan.

Widespread deployment of solar energy increases the resilience of the electric grid, strengthens national security and can enhance local emergency response capabilities.

These are the conclusions of a feasibility study by Lawrence J. Furman, principal of Furman Consulting Group, LLC during the course of his studies for an MBA in Managing for Sustainability at Marlboro College Graduate School.

The money saved is a function of the number and capacity of the PV solar systems, installation costs, financing costs, electricity costs, and SREC values.

The study modeled the installation of 152.5 megawatts, MW, of photovoltaic, PV, solar, as:

• A 50 KW PV solar array on each of the 2,500 public schools,
• A 500 KW PV solar array on each of the 19 community colleges,
• A 1.5 MW, PV Solar array on each of the 12 public colleges and universities.

The study assumed:

• Installation costs of $6.00 per watt, $300,000 for a 50 kilowatt, or KW, system.
• Bond financing at 5% for 10 years,
• Electricity prices fixed at 2010 levels for 10 years,
• Solar Renewable Energy Certificates, SRECs, fixed at 2010 levels for 10 years.

While there are “carbon footprints” and “resource footprints” in the manufacture and installation of solar energy systems, and while the systems would have to be refurbished or recycled at the end of their useful life, solar energy produces power without the release of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases and without the release of radioactive wastes or toxic wastes, such as those associated with coal, oil, natural gas, or nuclear power. In addition, there is no loss of ecosystem services associated with the deployment of a solar energy system on the roof of a building or over a parking lot. There is a loss of ecosystem services when a solar array is deployed as a ground mounted system in a field.

New Jersey, a state of approximately 8 million people, is perhaps a bell-weather state in the United States. The NJ Energy Master Plan calls 22.5% renewable energy by 2021. Approximately 50% of New Jersey’s 7 gigawatts (GW) of electric generating capacity comes from an aging fleet of nuclear power plants. Exelon, the owner / operator of the Oyster Creek nuclear facility, recently announced that it will close the nuclear plant in 2019, rather than install cooling towers.

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Copies of the report are available from Furman Consulting Group, LLC..

George Gilder, writing in the Wall Street Journal, 11/18/10, in California’s Destructive Green Jobs Lobby complained of the defeat of the repeal of the “Global Warming Solutions Act.”

“Economic sanity lost out in what may have been the most important election on Nov. 2—and, no, I’m not talking about the gubernatorial or senate races. … This was the California referendum to repeal Assembly Bill 32, the so-called Global Warming Solutions Act, which ratchets the state’s economy back to 1990 levels of greenhouse gases by 2020. That’s a 30% drop followed by a mandated 80% overall drop by 2050. Together with a $500 billion public-pension overhang, the new energy cap dooms the state to bankruptcy.”

Gilder also wrote: “California officials acknowledged last Thursday that the state faces $20 billion deficits every year from now to 2016.” That’s $120 Billion over the next 6 years. This is a state of 37 million people (US Census). It should be able to borrow that money at 4% or 5% – which is $3083 per capita. Borrowed at 5% interest over 20 years, it’s $20.35 per person per month – which does not seem to be enough to push someone into bankruptcy.

Carbon Nation, by Peter Byck

Gilder calls for exploitation of natural gas and then says ‘All the so-called “renewables” programs waste and desecrate the precious resource of arable land that feeds the world.’ I would urge Gilder to see Carbon Nation, a film by Peter Byck,  Gasland, a film by Josh Fox, and read Vapor Trails, a novel by Bob Siegel and Roger Saillant.

Gilder should understand that:

1. Rooftop solar is built on rooftops, which are not arable land.
2. Big solar thermal projects are built in deserts, which are also not arable land.
3. Gilder complains that “so-called ‘renewables’ programs waste and desecrate the precious resource of arable land’ and he calls for exploitation of natural gas – has he seen what “fracking” does to land? (CBS / NY Times ).
4. Gilder really doesn’t seem to understand wind, solar, geothermal, other renewable or sustainable energy systems, or energy efficiency.

Vapor Trails

Gilder describes Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers as “Al Gore’s investment affiliate.” I’m not sure when KPCB was founded, but characterizing it as “Gore’s investment affiliate seems to be misleading at best. Gore might be a client, but with a net worth estimated to about $100 Million, (Celebrity Net Worth) he can’t be a significant client for the venture capital company the New York Times called “One of Silicon Valley’s most prominent venture capital firms ” (here).  John Doerr – characterized by Gilder as one of Gore’s investment buddies, joined KPCB in 1980 – when Gore represented Tennessee in the U. S. Congress (and, according to PBS, Gore co-sponsored the first Congressional hearings on the implications of global warming.)

According to the Kliener Perkins web site, Doerr backed

• Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt at  Google,
• Jeff Bezos at Amazon,
• Scott Cook, Bill Campbell at Intuit,
• Andy Bechtolsheim, Scott McNealy, Bill Joy, Vinod Khosla at Sun,
• And the founders of Compaq, Cypress, Macromedia and Symantec.

Altho Sun was recently aquired by Oracle and Compaq was aquired by HP, these were started in the 1980s, when then-Representative Gore was in Tennessee.  Macromedia was started in 1992, when then-Senator Gore ran for Vice President.

Gilder concludes that a transformation of the energy economy will take $45 Trillion. I don’t know where he gets that figure. NJ has 8 million people and needs 7 GW of electric generating capacity. Extrapolating that to the US 300 million people, and we can conclude that the US needs about 260 gigawatts, gw, of electric generating capacity. Let’s suppose that’s half of the energy we need – so we need the equivalent of 520 gw.

If we used wind and solar we could implement 300 gw of wind and 220 gw of solar. Wind is $2.0 Billion to $3.0 Billion per gigawatt. Let’s say $3.0 Billion. Solar is $5.75 to $6.25 Billion per gw; let’s say $6.25 Billion per gw. (Please note that I’m ignoring efficiency, geothermal, marine hydro, algae based and other biofuels for the purposes of keeping this model simple.)

• 300 GW of Wind at $3 Billion per gw is $900 Billion.
• 220 GW of Solar at $6.25 Billion per GW is $1.375 Trillion or $1,375 Billion.

This adds up to $2.275 Trillion. A tremendous amount of money, but 5.1% of $45 Trillion.

This sloppy journalism is about what I expect from News Corp.’s “Faux News”. It is not what I expect from News Corp’s Wall St. Journal.

Cassandra Kling, an old friend of mine, currently with Infinite Energy, is sponsoring “Solar Energy Options for your Home” Tuesday, May 12. 7 – 8 PM. Hampton Inn, 16 Frontage Drive, in Clinton, NJ. Find out about Solar technologies, Installation, Incentives, the costs and how to make money. The answer is SREC’s. Go Solar. Fight Climate Change. Make Money.

President Barack Obama fired GM CEO Rick Wagoner. He was replaced by Fritz Henderson, who had been Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer. While I agree that Wagoner should probably have been fired, I think his replacement should have been someone from the outside. Promoting from within is a good thing when a company is doing well, but not when the company is collapsing. General Electric, for example, has always promoted new CEO’s from within. But GE was not in trouble when Welch took over, or when he handed the reins to Immelt. IBM was in trouble when the Board brought in Lou Gerstner, an outsider, to, as he put it, teach that elephant to dance. GM is in serious trouble. As an insider, Henderson may be too in step with the corporate culture to change anything.  As an outsider I can see what Henderson might miss.

So how would I fix GM?

1. Every car, light truck, and truck that comes off the lot should be a diesel  electric hybrid. Like the Toyota Prius, and GM could license the technology from Toyota, but it should burn diesel fuel. That would pave the way to bio-diesel.
2. Offer a 2 kw solar electric system with every car. This should be priced at $15,000, installed. It’s $10,500 after the economic stimulus plan’s 30% tax break. It would It would charge the batteries, or power a small home during daylight hours.

3. Give everyone stock options, and limit salaries to $390,000 – less than the salary of the President of the United States.

4. Demand that the government – my new management – take over the burden of health care for all my employees, my retirees, and every other citizen. Medicare works well for my father. It would work well for me!

Given our cultural separations – “artists” in one place – “engineers” another – many of us – I’m guilty of this frequently – we forget how intertwined, and sometimes indistinguishable they are. Rather than make the general argument, check out Daniel Bauen, a young Atlanta-based maker and designer of things. You can look at his resume – and some brilliant pieces of work. If anyone thinks they can draw bright lines between the art and the engineering, we might have an interesting discussion. What’s beyond question is that he’s doing marvelous work. Beautiful, practical – and some so fun that I’m tempted to say that he’s a toymaker – who, in order to make what he makes – became an engineerand

A motorized moving shade system for buildings – that is, roof-mounted solar panels move automatically in order to maximize shade and solar collection: (pictured left); A solar rock spinner – solar-powered when none one feels like pushing it around;

Bauen also – as a student – participated in the design of two bood-drawing devices one for pediatric and one for diabetics, designed to alleviate, if not  eliminate the pain of blood drawing.

There’s more at Daniel Bauen’a personal site and even more at his other site-  Engineerable.

Engineerable is  a dedicated to Bauen’s published work on the amazing site Instructables, which was one of inspirations for PopularLogistics -  because it’s premises include the democratization of technology, and how communities can share knowledge build on that knowledge, and  in the process, among other things, promise recycling and reuse, and fabricate green technologies which the marketplace has yet to deliver at a reasonable price.

Do check out  Daniel Bauen’s collection of “Instructables.” And the larger Instructables community. One of the things we’ve wanted to cover more are risk-reduction and disaster-response devices and technologies. In a book and proposal we’re working on at the moment – one of the central premises is that effective disaster preparedness will come from communities, and one of the networks or communities with the biggest role to play are – we don’t know what to call them – but the community of which. Instructables is an exemplar – that among us we have the skillsets to change things for the better – and the ability to improve and share them among themselves.

It’s primarily because we’re a bit ahort-staffed that we haven’t done more in this vein, but it’s part of what we’re certain will evolve into a critical cultural movement to change out national habits about technology in ways that wlll reduce the risk of disasters, mitigate the harm of disasters, and speed rebuilding and recovery.

So hats off, then, to Mr. Bauen and Instructables. And we’d also like to point out that in our household, and our neighborhood, which has, roughly .75 dogs per person, would regard a man who made a bicycle powered tennis-ball thrower with near-religous awe, as our dogs regard tennis balls as objects of great desire.

(Via Inhabitat) Which may, in fact, exceed FEMA’s exertions – despite the fact that, as Paul Villinski

, a

New York-based artist has demonstrated, it’s entirely possible to construct livable/usable emergency structures which rely on solar and wind power. From Bridget Steffen at Inhabitat, Solar Powered Mobile Emergency Response Studio:

Better yet, make sure you read the whole piece and see the images – the one above the jump, taken alone, doesn’t do it justice.NB: as of this writing – October 30th – Villinski’s bandwidth limit had been exceeded. Waiting and checking back later will, we think, be worth it.

Villinski – main site.

Emergency Response Studio

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Other coverage.

The Gore Energy Challenge: Clean and Green by 2018.  Visionary, Reasonable, Achievable. Ask T. Boone Pickens at The Pickens Plan, and Peter Mandelstam at Blue Water Wind.

We could meet the electric power requirements of the United States, estimated at 250 Gigawatts, GW, of generating capacity with wind turbines and photovoltaic solar arrays, for about $811 Billion in 10 years.

• Land Based Wind: 100 GW, or 40%, at $2.0 Billion per GW: $200 Billion.
• Offshore Wind: 100 GW, or 40%, at $2.86 Billion per GW: $286 Billion.
• PV Solar: 50 GW, or 20% at $6.5 Billion per GW: $325 Billion.
• Total Cost: $811 Billion. (less than has been squandered on the war in Iraq.)

• Saving the earth: Priceless.
  

Key Benefits:

• Good Jobs.
• Healthy Economy.
• Enhanced Emergency Response Capability.
• Stronger National Security.
• Clean Environment.
• No Toxic Wastes.
• No Mercury.
  

• No Radioactive Wastes.
• No Coal Mining Disasters.
• Less Government Regulation.

This plan doesn’t exploit solar thermal, marine kinetic, geothermal, deep geothermal, cogen, biofuels, or conservation, which will be integrated into this plan in the near future. The plan also focuses on current electricity demand. It does not yet forecast increased electricity demand from population growth, transition from fossil fuels for heating or cooking, or increased reliance on plug-in hybrid cars.

Clean and Green By 2018!