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In This Issue...
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Sun Power: Santa Cruz City Schools and Cabrillo College Go Solar
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Sun Power: Santa Cruz City Schools and Cabrillo College Go Solar
By Michael Thomas
Solar energy is about to make a big splash in Santa Cruz County. Over the next year, hundreds of solar panels will be installed atop seven schools in the Santa Cruz City district, including Soquel High.
Ultimately, the panels will capture and convert solar energy to electricity for these campuses â€" almost all the power the facilities consume. But that’s only a start.
Within the next month, Cabrillo College trustees are expected to approve the installation of the largest solar array in Santa Cruz County. It will slash up to 20 percent of the college’s consumption of PG&E power, which now comes almost entirely from burning natural gas.
Altogether, the new arrays basking in coastal rays will churn out power approaching 2.7 megawatts. That’s roughly equivalent to the demand of over 1,000 homes.
Why the big surge now? After all, the solar technology being used is proven and reliable. It’s not new technology.
In January, the state launched a 10-year California Solar Initiative program that will offer $2.1 billion in rebates for residential and commercial solar systems.
However, that doesn’t appear to explain the local surge in solar projects. There were rebates before and the latest money has even more bureaucracy attached. Is there another reason?
“We want to send a message to the community that we are green and environmentally conscious,” explained Doug Deaver, Cabrillo’s director of facilities planning and purchasing.
While both Cabrillo and Santa Cruz City Schools will save some money as the cost of conventional electricity rises, it’s clear that something beyond economics is making these projects attractive now.
Cynthia Hawthorne, vice president of the Santa Cruz City School Board, was brimming with enthusiasm after the board awarded the installation contracts on Oct. 24. Beyond the prospect of slashing electrical bills by $2 million over the next two decades, she pointed out that the solar panels will keep 12 million pounds of carbon out of the atmosphere.
“It’s a great moment in public schools,” she said. “For the environment … and it’s fiscally responsible.”
The Sun is Rising, Albeit Slowly
In California, the vast majority of our electrical power, about 40 percent, is produced by natural gas-burning plants like the one in Moss Landing. Another 24 percent comes from nuclear power. Large hydroelectric dams provide 22 percent of our electricity, and renewable energy sources trail the pack at just 12 percent.
Of the renewable energy we use, only 1 percent comes from solar sources, according to PG&E figures.
Nevertheless, PG&E now has 18,000 customers in California using solar panels to offset their demand, and even feed power back into the grid for neighbors to use.
According to spokesperson Melissa Mooney, PG&E just designed a 553-megawatt system in the Mojave Desert. That’s big enough to power 400,000 homes, and it represents just half of the contracts that PG&E has signed for industrial solar production this year.
It’s not the cheapest technology. Solar systems like the ones being installed at our schools cost $8.50 to $9 per watt, and current rebate programs cover just $2.20 per watt. But solar systems pay for themselves over time. The payoff is so consistent that independent companies are willing to advance the cash for the systems and then recover the costs from institutions like schools, which pay the companies directly for the electricity at fixed rates. The rates are expected to be lower than the cost of future PG&E generated power.
Cabrillo’s system will be financed by a company called Generating Assets and a local company called Solar Technologies will purchase the panels and manage the installation.
The two companies secured $2.2 million in rebates for the $8 million Cabrillo project. Simultaneously last year, they secured $4.7 million for the Santa Cruz City Schools project, though the board ultimately delayed awarding the contracts to allow for competitive bids.
Solar Technologies and Generating Assets won the contract for Soquel High, and two other companies will be handling the other facilities.
Roger DeNault, founder of Solar Technologies, was disappointed that portions of the project went to out-of-town companies after his company helped lay the groundwork. But the veteran of the solar industry is enthused about the slew of upcoming projects here.
He pointed out that Cabrillo’s three acres of solar panels will have the environmental impact of 335 acres of trees.
Santa Cruz Schools to be 90 Percent Solar
The nine Santa Cruz City Schools facilities will be converted to solar power by three different firms. In April, the district was poised to award the entire contract to Generating Assets and DeNault’s firm, but a pack of other companies emerged to vie for the contracts.
District business chief Dick Moss said the project will be more secure with multiple firms bringing their resources to the table.
“The board wanted to not put all the eggs in one basket,” Moss said. “We have deadlines we have to meet with PG&E.”
To lock in the rebates, which total about $4 million, the solar panels must be installed and supplying energy by September of next year. According to Hawthorne, “If one of the companies has difficulty in coming through, we will have somebody else.”
however, boardmember John Collins said he was disappointed that the district wasn’t able to move quicker and work with the local companies. “I think we could have been up and operational by now,” he said. “I am glad that Generating Assets got at least one of the contracts.”
Each of the three contracts is based on the same model: the installer, or their financing partner, pays for the up-front costs, and then charges the schools for the electricity they consume on an annual basis.
Generating Assets and Solar Technologies will install a 447-kilowatt system at Soquel High. Solar Technologies has about 20 local employees, including some installers, and they’ll be hiring additional contractors as well.
Generating Assets will then charge the district 11.3 cents per kilowatt hour, increasing annually by 3 percent.
Their rates are initially the cheapest of the three contractors, and Moss said that’s due in part to Soquel High’s vast, flat roofs.
“We just put a new metal roof on it and it’s fairly straightforward to do installation on a metal roof,” he said.
Gault School, on the other hand, was cut from the project because its tile roofs presented a major obstacle to securing panels.
For Santa Cruz High, the financing group is Solar Power Partners of San Francisco and the installer will be SolarCity of Foster City. They’ll put in a 288-kilowatt system and then charge the district 13.5 cents per kilowatt hour, with an annual increase of 3.5 percent.
Systems at the remaining seven schools, which will produce a total of 976 kilowatts, will be financed and installed by UPC Solar of Chicago. UPC will charge 14.35 cents per kilowatt hour, increasing 2 percent annually.
Moss said the UPC rates will start higher but work out to be lower over the 20-year contract. All the contracts include options for the district to purchase the solar panels after five or six years.
Plans must be finalized and approved by the Office of the State Architect, but construction could start next spring, according to Moss.
Location of Panels a Challenge for Cabrillo
Cabrillo’s Governing Board voted on Oct. 1 to negotiate the final terms of an installation and power purchase agreement with Generating Assets and Solar Technologies.
Though the Cabrillo community is undoubtedly excited about the plan, some details have been challenging. Locating the panels, the weight they will add to the buildings and maintenance issues have all required careful planning.
Solar Technologies initially wanted to locate most of the panels on a hillside towards the rear of campus.
“It’s already got the right slope and the angle to the southwest is basically perfect,” DeNault said.
Technically, south-facing hills get the most consistent sun. But the sun is strongest in the summer, when it’s also in the southwestern sky. As a result, panels facing southwest produce more energy over the course of the year.
Sun intensity is critically important to solar panels’ productivity. In fact, a square meter panel in Northern California might only produce 4.5 kilowatts per hour, while the same panel in Southern California can produce as much as 7 kilowatts.
California’s old incentive program, operated through the Public Utilities Commission, based rebates mostly on the size of the panels. The new California Solar Initiative plan requires PG&E to evaluate production capacity much more precisely. Applications must specify the region, the orientation of the panels and even the presence of trees that could shade the panels.
According to Deaver, that southwest facing hill is near and dear to participants in the College’s gardening project. As a result, an unlikely group of critics demanded that all the panels be placed on rooftops.
The rooftops presented obstacles too. If too much weight was added to them, the buildings, some of which date from the 1970s, would be subject to state mandated seismic retrofitting.
The panels weigh about four pounds per square foot, and the buildings could support about half that without triggering a seismic retrofit.
Now the plan is to split most of the panels between two buildings, specifically the 500 and 600 blocks, and put a limited number of panels on the hillside. That keeps the whole installation close enough to share one transformer, which is also critical to keeping the costs down.
With those technical details largely resolved, Deaver said the final step is for Generating Assets to return with an attractive rate structure.
“They have to come back and show us that they can sell us power at a rate that’s competitive,” Deaver said.
Assuming the numbers pen out, by next fall as much as 20 percent of Cabrillo’s power could come from the great big “space heater” in the sky.
One Man’s Passion for Sun Power
The solar projects being launched this year are the culmination of effort from many quarters, but Solar Technology’s Roger DeNault has played a key role as a tireless promoter of solar energy in Santa Cruz County.
In the 1970s DeNault was working in Silicon Valley, but got tired of living in a place where, on many days, smog made it hard to make out the distant Santa Cruz Mountains. He moved to Santa Cruz County and started a solar water heating company called Altenergy. It was the first venture of its kind here.
DeNault later experimented with producing electricity from geothermal sources and helped build the first commercial geothermal power plant in Oregon. A dedicated tinkerer, he moved on to automobiles and started a solar car company called ElectroAutomotive. His former partner now runs that business, but DeNault still scoots around town in a homebuilt electric car.
It’s a 1981 VW Rabbit topped with solar panels. To store power for the electric motors, DeNault shoehorned eight six-volt batteries into the engine compartment and put another eight where the gas tank once was. He rechristened it a “Voltswagen…with a T.”
Ornery to Start
“I was ornery,” DeNault recalls of his early days in alternative energy. “I didn’t like the idea of being dependent on all the systems we are dependent on in society.”
Living outside town, he raised chickens and grew food in a hydroponic garden. At some point, he developed a more practical approach. He got married and moved to a townhouse in Live Oak.
“I found out that it was darn hard to separate yourself from all the things that society provides for you,” he said.
His company occasionally gets calls from iconoclasts striving to live “off the grid,” and DeNault informs them that to access the rebates, you actually have to be connected to the grid.
He founded Solar Technologies in 1998, and the company has contributed to the most ambitious solar projects in the area. Working with Barry Swenson Builder, Schott Solar and ElectroRoof, they installed a large array on the roof of Plantronics. At 262 kilowatts, it is the largest in Santa Cruz County. But not for long.
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