solar panel grants massachusetts
Founded in 1967 and situated on 35 acres of the Springfield Armory National Historic Site, Western Massachusetts, Springfield Technical Community College (STCC) is the only community Technical College in the state. Now, with the addition of 82.9 kilowatts solar panels on the roof of building 20, STCC claimed another first the largest installer of solar energy in the region, and one of the largest in the state as well.
Building 20 houses of 14 health programs running 24 / 7, a library, a stream of traffic which could be envious of New York, and 272 photovoltaic (PV) panels on the roof poised to transform the sun into electricity. The panels architecture is such that the facility did not even enter the roof membrane, and no building permit was required.
It certainly surpasses that of nearby technology park, where three years ago, School placed first in the 33-kilowatt solar array.
Despite its status as the only technical college in the state, STCC had not lot of money lying around, he has financed the most recent project with a grant of $ 407,000 from the Technology Collaborative Massachusetts Economic Development Agency of the state for renewable energy, the economics of innovation and e-health initiatives.
This reduced the project cost to $ 256,000, which the school financed by the issuance of an amount equal to zero interest own bonds for renewable energy, or CREBS, the Internal Revenue Service.
This new solar installation to save school nearly $ 19,000 per year in utility costs, or 1.7 percent of total expenditures required to operate the school, which has more one million annual energy bill, but as STCC President Ira Rubenzahl observes, is a step in the right direction on a planet facing increased global warming due to fossil fuel power plants emit carbon dioxide.
The system will be amortized in 18 years (or less if electricity prices continue to rise), but also adds value to the academic program of the school since installation in early technology Park has only limited access to students interested in pursuing a career in the design of energy solar manufacturing and installation.
Perhaps more important, the solar panel on Building 20 feeds directly into a web database where Students can access to monitor system performance, including ambient temperature, power output, and production of stored energy, and students can use the background materials – stored in five years – to assess the production, saving and solar energy efficiency values from year to year.
This contribution is valuable to the school programs that address building design and construction, offering students the opportunity to see first hand how solar arrays relate not only to installation techniques, but, on the road, architecture parameters and specifications for civil engineering such as roof loads and stresses.
Sitting on a natural elevation, with tall buildings equipped with flat roofs, the campus of STCC is an ideal location for energy batteries Solar. This means of course that the school has plans for more sunshine, the next units equipped with solar trackers that may or under the concentration solar energy using parabolic mirrors.
Similar initiatives in solar energy, supported by ARRA, arise anywhere in the country, causing many renewable energy experts to conclude that 2009 may be the year when solar made an indelible mark on the energy sector – an opinion unsupported by Forbes magazine, which sees renewable energy as having had its peak between 2006 and 2008, when these huge financial institutions like the now defunct Lehman Bros. financed renewable energy in exchange for tax credits.