October 2011 - Solar Decathlon Results from Washington DC
Solar Systems of Indiana was proud to work with Purdue and their fanastic team.
PURDUE places 2nd at Prestigious International Solar Competition.
See Solar Decathlon Tab for a review of the event.
From Purdue's Bill Hutzell:
You’d be interested to know that the PV system was one of the keys to our successful finish. The weather was overcast during the entire competition and our solar panels gave us a distinct advantage. Many of the contending teams did not produce enough solar electricity to complete the contest even though they had large arrays, microinverters, and spent more money than we did. I think it was a combination of the SunPower panels, proper mounting angles, and quality balance of system components.
Bill Hutzel
MET Department
hutzelw@purdue.edu
From SunPower
SunPower will issue the attached press release around 2:00 p.m. this afternoon 10/4/2011 - Pacific Time announcing that the team of students representing
Purdue University at the 2011 U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon has placed second using high-performance SunPower solar panels to power INhome, the home they built for the competition. The school earned a perfect 100 point score in the Energy Balance category, placed second in Affordability and Comfort Zone categories, third in Hot Water and fifth in Market Appeal. Team Purdue selected the SunPower® E19 / 238 Solar Panel to install on its INhome entry.
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Solar Systems of Indiana Picked to Work on Purdue University's Solar Decathlon Entry.
See " Photos Tab " for pictures of the 8.568 KW Solar Array consisting of 36 - 238W Sunpower Modules
June 2011
Efficient. Practical. Essential. The INhome (short for Indiana home) features efficient systems and sustainable design without sacrificing modern comforts and amenities. The INhome is a fully functional, yet practical net-zero energy home designed for a typical Midwestern consumer in today’s cost-competitive residential market. With the depletion of natural resources and increasing use of energy worldwide, efficient home design is essential to our country’s energy security and future prosperity. The INhome is one vision for future residential housing. Team Purdue encourages you to use these efficient, practical, and essential ideas, "From INhome to YOURhome".
Purdue University was selected to participate in the United States Department of Energy Solar Decathlon along with 19 other schools from around the globe. The competition wishes to challenge each team to design, build, and operate a house that is 100% solar powered that fits with current mid-west architecture design. This allows our home to appeal to the general homeowner population. The decathlon consists of ten different portions to the competition: Architecture, market appeal, engineering, communications, affordability, comfort zone, hot water, appliances, home entertainment, and energy balance. The team that most successfully accomplishes each segment will be given the title of 2011 Department of Energy Solar Decathlon winner. The first solar decathlon took place in 2002 and has since been conducted every two years.
The competition will take place at the National Mall's West Potomac Park in Washington D.C. from September 23 to October 2, 2011. The houses will be open to the public for tours. Each team must assemble their homes at this location. Therefore, INhome is designed to be transported across the nation. Following the competition, INhome will make its way back to Lafayette, Indiana where a local family will live in the sustainable home.
JANUARY, 2011 PRESS RELEASE - SOLAR SYSTEMS OF INDIANA/SCI-REMC
Martinsville REMC office installs solar panels
By Aleasha Sandley asandley@reporter-times.com
January 3, 2011
South Central Indiana REMC recently installed two solar panels near its Martinsville headquarters. The panels provide power to the utility’s electronic sign that sits nearby. The system was installed by Solar Systems of Indiana, Inc.
South Central Indiana REMC officials want to be a source of information for the electric utility’s customers who are interested in going solar.
About three weeks ago, SCI installed two photovoltaic solar panels at its Martinsville headquarters. The panels are connected to SCI’s power grid and offset the power use of its electronic sign. Any extra energy is fed back to the grid.
Creating its own solar power is not the main point of the panels, visible to motorists along Morton Avenue, SCI President and CEO Kevin Sump said. Instead, the utility hopes to show its customers how solar energy works and how much energy can be gained from the sun.
“The main reason we’re doing it is a lot of our members are interested in renewable energy sources,” Sump said. “We wanted to have something that they can see and something that would provide us with output data that we could provide to our members so not only could they see a system but they can get a better idea of what it is like, what they can expect.
“We certainly support renewable energy if it makes sense for our members.”
Sump said SCI has no stake in selling solar panels or promoting the use of that type of energy. The panels, which cost $39,260, were purchased mostly through funding from SCI parent Hoosier Energy, which pitched in $25,000. The utility also received a $10,300 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and paid the remaining cost on its own.
Recovering the costs of the panels is expected to take more than 23 years, according to an SCI press release.
“A system like this is pretty expensive,” Sump said. “An average homeowner may not be able to afford or justify it. We just wanted to install the system, have it there, and at some point our system will be auto-loading the output data onto our website. Those are the kinds of things that our members need to see.”
The two panels generate 4,500 watts of power, which is equivalent to running one water heater or about two hair dryers, according to the release. SCI’s electronic sign uses about 1,200 watts of power.
Photovoltaic technology has advanced in recent years.
“There is a lot of interest in renewable energy,” SCI Vice President of Engineering Jack Hubbard said. According to SCI, 88 percent of all electric cooperatives offer electricity generated from renewable sources. In 2008, 11 percent of electric cooperative power sales came from renewable energy, including wind, solar, hydro, refuse-derived fuel, geothermal, waste heat recovery and biomass.
Customers producing energy
SCI already has six members using solar panels to supplement their energy supply. Among the six, 13 kilowatts of grid-connected photovoltaic generation occurs, with the largest installed system creating 4.4. kilowatts and the smallest generating 0.57 kilowatts. On average, SCI buys back 3.2 kilowatt-hours from each installed kilowatt of photovoltaic generation per month.
“Of course, the units produce more electricity than we buy back,” Hubbard said. “Most of the (photovoltaic) generated electricity is consumed by the residence, reducing the amount of energy needed from SCI REMC.”
Sump said the amount of money earned by members selling back their energy to SCI was minimal.
“We’re talking a few dollars each month,” he said. “You couldn’t justify putting one in based on what you’re selling back.”
“Everyone hopes that the price of the equipment comes down,” he said. “The payback on that is many, many years out. The anticipation is that the cost of all these renewable resources will come down in the future and that’s certainly the hope.”
Members interested in connecting a solar system to the grid can contact Hubbard at SCI at 765-342-3344. The members must sign contracts and SCI must install a commercial-grade meter to register the energy produced.
Copyright: HeraldTimesOnline.com 2011
Alexander Jarvis of Solar Systems of Indiana completed work on an internationally published "PV Design and Installation for Dummies" energy design book to be available in September of this year.
Indianapolis Power and Light (IPL) to offer $2/watt to their customers for installing PV systems, effective June 1st, 2010. $4000/maximum cash payment per installation.
goto website www.aes.com/ipl/index?page=IPLHome , for forms, details. IPL is the first utility in the state of Indiana to offer such an incentive.
Alex Jarvis of Solar Systems of Indiana will be teaching intermediate and PV design and install class at the MREA's Renew The Earth Institute in March, August and October.
Solar Systems of Indiana install's 4.4 kW PV system on Westside Bloomingfoods Market and Deli. See the pictures!
Bloomfoods and Solar Systems of Indiana worked to secure a state matching funds grant from the Indiana Department of Energy's APE grant program. The 20 panel 4.4kW grid tied battery free system will be mounted on the store's south-facing awning.
The installation project will be completed by May 2010.
Solar Systems of Indiana featured in Renewable Energy World blog:
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2009/11/making-energy-visi
ble-one-solar-panel-at-a-time
Making Energy Visible, One Solar Panel at a Time
By Jeremy Shere
Energy is invisible.
The more I work on my book and the more I read and think about energy—renewable and fossil—everything seems to come back to that one, basic premise: for most people, most of the time, energy is simply, magically there. Flip a switch and the lights go on. Turn the key in the ignition and off you go. The only time most of us even think about energy is when it’s not immediately available—when the lights don’t turn on or the car makes a weird noise.
Otherwise, though, energy is pretty much invisible, hidden away behind walls and under hoods. And that’s a problem because when energy is invisible it’s all too easy to ignore its costs, especially the hidden costs to health and the environment.
So one of the main purposes of the book is precisely to make energy visible. Now, I’m a writer, so mostly what I do is sit at a computer and write. Within the next few months I’ll also begin traveling widely across the country, visiting and reporting from wind farms, solar farms, and other renewable energy-related spots.
But this past Friday I did more than just visit and hang out and observe: I helped my friend Alex Jarvis install two solar panels at Brown County High School in Nashville, Indiana.
A few months earlier I’d interviewed Alex, a local (Bloomington-area) solar guy and owner of Solar Systems of Indiana. Alex had worked at Otis elevators for eight years as a buyer for the company’s manufacturing and repair shop in Bloomington, but then got laid off when the plant left town. Cleaning out his desk, he saw an article he’d ripped out of some magazine about solar panels. A tech geek since grade school, the kind of kid who loved to mess around with science kits and build radios, Alex decided to get into the solar business. After a year spent driving around the country, attending solar seminars and workshops, sleeping in his car to save on motels, he returned to Southern Indiana, determined to become the area’s go-to guy for small-scale solar installations.
And he did. Business hasn’t exactly been booming, but solar is starting to catch on, even in a die-hard coal state like Indiana. And Alex is making the best of it—he’s put in about 14 solar systems in the past two years.
When we first met I asked if I could come along on his next job. Alex said sure, and a few months later I got an email telling me that he had a job the next day, and that I could meet him. Only he didn’t just want me to stand by taking notes. It was a two-man job, this solar installation, and I was going to be man #2.
Nashville is about 20 minutes outside of Bloomington by car, and in mid autumn, when the leaves have changed and the air is crisp, it’s a beautiful, scenic drive. I met Alex in the high school parking lot. Our job that day was to install two solar panels mounted on a pole to power a battery for a fountain pump in the school’s outdoor courtyard. The local community foundation had gotten a grant to cover the cost—about $3600. It was warm for early November, so I threw my jacket in my car and headed with Alex over to his station wagon. It took three trips to haul the equipment to the courtyard: two 12 volt, 135 watt photovoltaic solar panels, several boxes of tools, and a few bags of nuts and bolts.
A few days earlier Alex had been to the site to set the mounting pole and battery box near the fountain, a small, rock-lined pool now filled with stagnant, brackish water. We set the panels and other equipment down on the grass, unfolded the instructions, and got to work.
On TV, renewable energy always has a clean gleaming, sci-fi sheen: majestic wind turbines set again a vast, oceanic backdrop … hundreds of solar panels gleaming in the desert sun … important-looking scientists handling test tubes in a state-of-the art lab. But it turns out that setting up a couple of solar panels is a lot like playing with a life-sized erector set. Because the panels were going to be mounted on a pole (and not on a roof), we had to first build the scaffolding to hold them. This was both fairly straightforward and tricky, involving lots of bolting and unbolting (when we realized that we’d put one part on backwards), lifting and holding sharp, awkward metal parts, and manipulating several different sizes and types of wrenches.
Once the scaffolding was in place, it was time to mount the panels, which were about 2 feet by 4 feet and weight maybe 30 or 40 pounds a piece. And again, there was nothing cool or high tech about the process—just a lot of lifting and holding and grunting and making sure that the panels were properly bolted into place.
But once they were up, facing south and pointed at a 30 degree angle to the sun, the panels did look pretty cool. And the best part, to my mind, was that the whole thing is out there, right out in the open, for everyone to see. At one point, as Alex and I were hoisting the panels, a kid stuck his head out a window and asked what we were doing.
“Putting up some solar panels to power the fountain,” I answered.
“Cool,” he said, “that’s pretty awesome.” And then I could hear him telling his friends what was happening, and a bunch of kids came to the window to check it out.
And at that moment I thought, we’re making energy visible. Two PV panels won’t provide much power, and they certainly won’t do much to reduce the school’s carbon footprint. And electricity is so cheap in Indiana (thanks to abundant coal reserves and a powerful coal lobby) that the panels won’t pay for themselves any time soon.
So the solar panels Alex and I put up are mainly symbolic of what’s possible. But symbols are important. The kids who go to Brown County High will see the panels and learn how they work. And they’ll make a direct connection between the sunlight hitting the panels and the pump circulating water through fountain in a way that simply wouldn’t be possible if the technology that produced the energy that makes the fountain work was hidden away underground or inside a box.
In any case, it was useful for a writer like me to get my hands dirty and get down in the trenches, so to speak, to see what’s it’s like to take part in making renewable energy happen.
FEATURE
Bloomington resident Alex Jarvis was once known as the drummer for some of our best local rock bands, but today Jarvis is an expert on solar energy. He recently visited our studio to talk about his work with the Midwest Renewable Energy Association, how solar energy works and how the average person can use it, and how the solar industry is in the shadow of the coal lobby. Jarvis also takes a look at the electricity bill of WFHB’s Keith Vogelsang in this Firehouse exclusive.
visit http://www.wfhb.org/news/dlnfeatures?page=9
Illinois Solar Energy Rebate Program
The focus of the Solar and Wind Energy Rebate Program, through the State's Renewable Energy Resources Program, is to encourage utilization of smaller-scale solar and wind energy systems in Illinois.
Description
Eligibility applicants include homeowners, businesses, public sector and non-profit entities who are customers of an electric or gas utility that impose the Renewable Energy Resources and Coal Technology Development Assistance Charge.
The program offers incentives up to 30% of total project cost for residential and business applicants, and 50% for public sector and non-profit entities. The maximum rebate is $50,000.
Visit: http://www.illinoisbiz.biz/dceo/Bureaus/Energy_Recycling/Energy/Clean+Energy/01-RERP.html
for the guidelines and application form for the SOLAR AND WIND ENERGY REBATE PROGRAM
For more information on the solar and wind energy rebate program, please contact:
Wayne Hartel
Department of Commerce & Economic Opportunity
217/785-3420
Wayne.hartel@illinois.gov
Scott Henkel
Department of Commerce & Economic Opportunity
217/785-3968
scott.henkel@illinois.gov
