clean energy manufacturing fund
Founded in 1967 and situated on 35 acres of the Springfield Armory National Historic Site, Springfield, Western Massachusetts' Technical Community College (STCC) is the only technical community college in the state. Now with the addition of a 82.9 kilowatt solar array on the roof of Building 20, also calls for the first STCC both the largest solar power facility in the region, and one of the largest in the state also.
Construction of 20 houses, 14 health programs running 24 / 7, a library, a traffic flow that make New York envious, and 272 photovoltaic (PV) panels on the roof about to convert sunlight into electricity. Architectural panels' installation is such that not even penetrate the roof membrane, and without a building permit is required.
Without doubt, eclipses to the vicinity of the Technology Park, where three years ago put the school in the first 33-kilowatt solar array.
Despite its status as university the only technique in the state, STCC not have much money out there, so the new project funded with a grant of 407,000 dollars from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, an economic development agency of the state for renewable energy, the economics of innovation and e-health.
This reduced the cost Project to 256,000 dollars, the school funded by the issuance of an equal amount of the zero interest rate, clean renewable energy bonds, or Crebs, from Internal Revenue Service.
This latest solar installation will save the school about $ 19,000 per year in utility costs, or 1.7 percent of total expenditure required to run the school, which has more than one million annual energy bill, but as STCC President Ira Rubenzahl notes is a step in the right direction on a planet with global warming increasing as a result of fossil fuel power plants that emit dioxide carbon.
The system will be amortized over 18 years (or less if electricity prices continue to rise), but also adds value to the program academic school, as the previous installation of Technology Park provides limited access to students interested in pursuing a career in design of energy solar, manufacture and installation.
Perhaps more important, the solar panel construction 20 is fed directly into the Web a database that students have access to monitor the performance of the system including temperature, energy production, energy production and cumulative, and students can use the accumulated records – stored more than five years – to monitor production, solar and efficiency savings year on year figures.
This contribution is valuable to school programs that deal with building design and construction, offering students the opportunity to see firsthand how the solar arrays refer both to the techniques of installation, but, by the way, architecture parameters and civil engineering specifications, as roof loads and stress factors.
Sitting on a natural elevation, with tall buildings equipped with flat roofs, the campus of STCC is an ideal place to solar energy panels. Which means, of course, that the school has plans for more solar energy, the following units equipped with solar trackers likely or involving the concentration of solar energy through parabolic mirrors.
Similar initiatives plot, backed by ARRA, are springing up around the country, leading many renewable energy experts to the conclusion that 2009 could be the solar year in which he makes an indelible mark on the energy sector – a opinion unsupported by Forbes magazine, which considers renewable energy as having had its heyday from 2006 until 2008, when large financial institutions such as the now defunct Lehman Brothers funded renewable energy, in exchange for tax credits.
