Now, bright, clean, renewable solar energy is turning to its darker side; the Charleston County jail in South Carolina.

Unlikely perhaps, but the large flat roofs of Charleston County detention center, also known as, “The House”, which aims to improve its status as one of the nation’s most crowded inmate facilities with an ongoing $100-million expansion slated for completion next year.

The solar array will also improve power consumption figures, which already reach 4.25 million kilowatts a year, through regional utility S. Carolina Electric & Gas (SCE&G). This is expected to double on completion of the new facility.

No mention has been made where the panels are to be placed, but the logical assumption is that they will go on the new expansion, some 323,000 square feet in size (or only slightly less than the original detention center, built in 1966, and its 1993 expansion), largely because of the two previous sites older roofs.

The plan is to cover said roof with American-made solar panels to offset a portion of the detention center’s electricity needs, through a $1.1 million grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA, which provides funding for governmental entities and schools to install energy efficiency devices like solar power. The grant competes for $2.8 million allotted to the state for renewable energy projects through ARRA.

The county believes the panels would more than pay for themselves through energy-cost savings, and some officials even speculate that the installation could help attract “clean energy” companies to the region. This would benefit S. Carolina’s citizens, who already hold a record as the sixth largest electricity consumers in the nation.

The solar photovoltaic “farm”, described as potentially producing 640,000 kilowatts a year, or enough to power about 5,300 homes, will also be responsible for eliminating 460 metric tons per year of carbon dioxide from coal-burning generation plants. This is the same as taking 84 cars off the road, or planting 11,785 trees, or preserving 104 acres of S. Carolina’s pine forests.

S. Carolina’s electricity generation mix currently consists of 61-percent coal-fired power plants, with the state’s electric cooperatives getting fully 80 percent of their electricity from coal. The solar proposal couldn’t have come at a better time, with Waxman-Markey in the wings and S. Carolina residents waking to the dangers of burning coal or piling the ash alongside streams and communities.

Cooler Planet is a leading solar resource for connecting consumers and commercial entities with local solar Installers. Cooler Planet’s solar panel resources and solar energy page contains articles and tools to help with your solar project.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/environment-articles/inmates-enjoy-solar-energy-in-jail-1615127.html

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The technology began on these tropical islands, and now it has come home to roost, but in a nice way.

On Dec. 10, the Big Island will power up a 4-acre solar farm based on Sopogy technology, which was spun off as Keahole Solar Power LLC to develop the project.

Located on Honolulu, Sopogy’s 500-kilowatt concentrating solar array, which is more efficient than solar photovoltaic systems, will deliver enough electricity to the Big Island’s power grid to serve 250 homes, according to state energy agency estimates.

This amount will help prevent 808 metric tons of carbon dioxide from oil-burning power plants (for which Hawaii is justly infamous), which is the same as preserving almost 8 acres of forest, planting 20,176 trees, or eliminating 154 cars from the road. In 2007, Hawaii’s generation mix stood at 68.4-percent oil, and 12.5 percent coal, with only 4.5-percent delivered from renewable resources like solar, wind, geothermal and biomass.

Sopogy’s 4-acre solar farm, comprised of 1,000 collectors about 12 feet long and five feet wide, will also eliminate the need to buy 2,000 barrels of oil, a development which state energy administrator Ted Peck called “exciting”.

The technology itself relies on troughs, or half-barrel-shaped solar collectors, which catch, reflect and concentrate the sun’s energy on a central collection bar. The system can head liquids up to 400 degrees (Fahrenheit), and the heat from the liquid used to produce steam to operate a turbine.

The array is being placed alongside Hawaii’s Natural Energy Laboratory (south of Kona International Airport), but a 44,572-square-foot pilot project in July, built by Sopogy and Helio Dynamics (a concentrating solar manufacturer), under the auspices of Southern California Gas (a division of Sempra Energy), proved the technology viable and compared Sopogy’s concentrating solar to larger concentrating trough arrays like Andasol 1 as the “PC size in concentrating solar generation” (as opposed to mainframes).

Sopogy’s collector, originally designed as the SopoFlare™ and destined for the commercial/industrial rooftop market as a substitute for solar thermal (solar hot water heating) or photovoltaic technologies, was developed in conjunction with an integrated roof rack mounting system.

All Sopogy’s offerings are based on its MicroCSP™ technology, which can be used in place of, or hybridized with, power generation systems, chiller (or AC) systems, process heat recovery devices, and even in desalination.

Originally founded in 2002 by Hawaiian-based Energy Industries (an energy product developer) as an energy concepts incubator at the Energy Laboratories site, Sopogy has gone on to become an innovator, offering a product that costs less to manufacture than solar photovoltaic, with about twice the efficiency. And, while not as efficient as utility-scale solar thermal collections systems, is less costly, provides for energy storage at night and on cloudy days, and offers the hope that someday the technology will be available in residential roof-sized units.

Sopogy is looking ahead to a 50-megawatt project in Spain, and its sister entity, Keahole, is hoping to develop 30 megawatts of concentrating solar thermal throughout the Islands in the next six years.

Cooler Planet is a leading solar resource for connecting consumers and commercial entities with local solar Installers. Cooler Planet’s solar panel resources and solar energy page contains articles and tools to help with your solar project.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/environment-articles/2000-oil-barrels-eliminated-by-solar-power-1590479.html

Please Note... All links within articles are placed by their author-owners and not by this blog.Products with in those links may or may not be the best in the world.If it sounds too good to be true it could be a scam.Articles are posted for their info,ideas and or entertainment value only.

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