4.4 MW of Solar Power from Constellation Energy

More than 8 Megawatts of Solar Now Supplies 6 Percent of DIA’s Total Electricity Needs

DENVER, July 28, 2011 – Constellation Energy (NYSE: CEG) and Denver International Airport (DIA) today announced the completion of a 4.4-megawatt, ground-mounted solar power system. Constellation Energy built, owns and maintains the solar installation, and DIA will purchase the electricity produced by the system over a 20-year period. It is the third large-scale solar project for DIA, bringing the airport’s total amount of hosted solar power to more than 8 megawatts – the most solar generation at a commercial airport in the United States.

In honor of the solar project’s completion, a celebration and ribbon-cutting were held today at DIA. Business and community leaders, as well as representatives from state and local government were on hand for the event, including Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, former Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter and Denver Mayor Michael Hancock.

“With the addition of this solar facility, Denver International Airport’s three solar array systems now produce approximately six percent of the airport’s total power requirements,” said Kim Day, aviation manager for DIA. “We support alternative energy applications at DIA because these projects are good for the environment while positively impacting our bottom line; they are financially sustainable. This airport was built with a goal of being green, and with this additional solar array, Denver International Airport now has one of the largest solar installations in North America.”
More on Destination Clean Energy: Denver International Airport Dedicates

If alternative energy sources excite you then you’re going to love DIY solar panels. We must now begin to seriously start taking advantage of alternative energy sources. We cannot continue to consume fossil fuels the way we have in the past.

It’s simply not sustainable on several levels. It may seem complex, but in reality making a solar power system isn’t hard at all. Furthermore, the tools and materials needed to get the job done can be purchased at your local hardware store.

For a couple hundred dollars you can buy everything you will need. There are some really great manuals can be purchased that instruct homeowners how to build a solar panel. One solar panel can generate up to 120 watts of electricity.

A solar array, which is several solar panels wired together, can generate enough electricity to power your entire home. Going off the grid is what this is known as. Going off the grid simply means that you no longer rely on the power company to supply you with your electricity.

The electricity that you do not use can actually be sold back to the power company. How awesome is that? Constructing DIY solar panels is a very straightforward process. Solar panels are made of solar cells that are strong, or wired together.

Photovoltaic refers to the solar cells converting light into electricity. Here, the source of light is, of course, the sun. Manufacturers charge tens of thousands of dollars for their solar power systems.

Getting the homeowner’s money back through savings can take a long time for high-priced systems. By building your own solar energy system you can do it for a fraction of that. These are high quality panels. The cost savings can be substantial as well. Getting your money back won’t take long at all.

As long as the system is maintained properly savings will continue. The federal government of the United States offers generous tax breaks and rebates to homeowners that use alternative energy. The technology is extremely user-friendly.

There are step-by-step guides that can be purchased online to show you how it’s done. There are both written instructions and a video series where you can see how it’s actually done. There are a great many advantages for utilizing DIY solar panels.

The sun is the source of an unlimited amount of energy that we can tap into. In addition, there is actually no pollution or carbon footprint involved with using it. I actually consider it to be a noble undertaking.

The day has come. We are good to go. We got an email from PG&E, our utility provider, saying they had inspected and signed off on our solar power system installation done by our friends at Solar City. Following close on that email’s heals was the official word from Solar City saying we were good to turn on our system.

It is a simple process but I still printed out the instructions for powering up the system and read them over a few times, not wanting make any mistakes and all. Turns out it is super easy and I may have worried too much, but better safe than sorry eh?

I installed the network monitoring device to my internet broadband setup so we can monitor our output of solar energy and so Solar City can monitor the system to make sure it is working properly.

Then I went out side and flipped the breakers on the inverter box for our solar system, then the breaker on our main electrical panel, and finally the electric ac/dc disconnect breaker next to our inverter.

The Solar City system power up instructions:

To Turn Your System On and Off:
(To turn off your system, follow these steps in reverse order.)
1. Locate your inverter(s) similar to the ones pictured Below. Turn on the inverter by flipping the AC/DC Disconnect switch(es) to the ON position. The inverter should be the first step in turning on your system and the last step in turning off your system. If you have multiple inverters, the order in which you switch the inverters on or off does not matter.

2. Locate the main electrical service panel similar to the image on the next page. It should be mounted on an external or garage wall. The switches on the front of the panel are called breakers. Turn on the breakers labeled “Solar System”, “PV”, “Photovoltaic Backfeed” or “SolarCity”. Some customers have an additional sub-panel. If this applies to you, please switch on the breakers for the solar system on both the main and sub-panel.

3. Some systems have external AC and DC disconnects similar to those depicted at right. If your system has one or both of these, then switch the handles to the ON position.

We are live. However the big irony today is that it is stormy and dark today with a big nasty winter storm rolling through on this December day. So not sure we will be generating very much solar power today but as soon as the clouds roll out we will be pulling juice out of the suns rays.

So solar power for homes and in particular our home is now a reality thanks to the solar power leasing arrangements we made with Solar City. We started this process over a year ago and the time frame got massively delayed but the economic crunch that hit our country but we still feel very good about doing this and adding solar to our home. Now that the funding is available to companies like Solar City and others to offer these leasing deals many more homeowners will be able to install solar power on their homes. It should not take nearly as long to get the system installed going forward and therefore the hurdles to going solar are reducing.

I would highly recommend homeowners look into adding solar to their homes as a viable way to offset some or all of their electrical power consumption and to contribute top the efforts to reduce global warming and fossil fuels consumption.

The installation of our Solar City solar power system for our home has moved forward nicely. One of the things we had to have done was a bit of upgrading to the rafters in our attic so that our roof can be structurally sound and support the panels effectively.

We have a low slope roof and thus our attic is pretty tight with barely enough room to stand in the middle of the house to very tight out on the edges of the roof. The Solar City crew ended up taking out my solar fan and cutting a larger hole in our roof in order to access the attic, load in lumber for the upgrade and do the job. Dave and the crew had to work in tight conditions but thankfully the warm weather we had been having cooled down on the rafter day and so it was not roasting in there.

After they had completed the rafter upgrade Octavio from Blue Turtle came by to seal up the footers for the panels and the reinstalled solar fan which the Solar City guys had used as access to the attic. It is a three step process, one to install the wetsuit coating around all the areas where the roof has been penetrated by bolts, conduit, and the fan. Then there is the primer coat of solar reflective paint, followed by the final coat of the solar reflective paint.

Next comes the panel install on Monday of this coming week, installation of the electrical connections, and inverter installation on the side of our house. If all goes well this next week we should be all set and ready for city inspections and sign off by PG&E so that we can turn on the system. Fingers crossed that his will only take a few weeks to get the official blessing for our system to be generating power for our household.

Going Solar. Soon!

The process of getting our house fitted with a solar system has now run its course and we are very close to the installation day and then of course the big moment. Switching it on and getting power from the sun!

Solar City has been in touch a lot in recent weeks to inform us of the process of getting the plans approved, permits approved at the city of Oakland, and to detail the rafter upgrades our house needs in order to be able to support the new system.

Our house is old (1918) but very sturdy built out of redwood. However the spacing of beams in the roof is a bit much so Solar City and Blue Turtle Roofing (the guys who installed our new cool roof coating) will be working to beef things up in the attic.

Not a simple job in our case as access to our attic crawl space is tight. The plan is to remove our solar fan and insert the lumber into the attic space via that portal in the roof. It might be a tight job and I appreciate the effort they will have to go through to accomplish it.

Once the rafter upgrades are done then the Solar City crew comes and does the panel installation. I will document that process on video and share it with you soon. It turns out that in the time since we signed the contract to lease a solar system from Solar City there has been a new generation of panels come on to the market so we are getting those on our roof. Good news in my book.

Looking forward to the next call from James, my Solar City rep, setting up the date for all of this. But it should be in the next week as long as the weather cooperates. Fingers crossed.

Watch SolarCity video

OK so we announced that we were going solar or at least partial solar for our power generation on our house using the new SolarLease program by Solar City. They had made it very easy to analyze and determine what kind of system we could install and how much it would save us in terms monthly payments and ROI over the life of the system.

So the first step after agreeing to go forward with a solar energy install was to fill out the lease application. This was a very easy step. Their application only required details of our first and second mortgage and basic homeowner details. Frankly I did not have to go digging deep into the file cabinets to fill it out and that makes me happy.

We were approved in a day (guess we have good credit rating) and we set up an appointment with Mike from Solar City to get the papers signed. This is where the process sort of resembles refinancing a mortgage. There is a stack of legal paperwork that has to be gone over and explained and then signed and initialed in a number of places. Mike made it easy and answered our questions.

So the ink is dry and the applications are in for our new solar power system. Now we wait for the engineers to set up an appointment with us to look at the house and determine how the system will be laid out at our house. Then the installation process begins.

Watch for more posts on the whole process, including video. If you want an analysis of your home and energy use to see if you could go solar too then contact Mike at Solar City [mlombardo @ solarcity.com] and tell him Kevin sent you.