The largest commercial solar rooftop installation in the United States sits not in the Sunbelt, but on three buildings in Farmingdale, New York. The solar project is a public/private partnership between the Clean Energy Initiative program of the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) and Fala Direct Marketing, one of the largest privately held direct marketing companies in the country. The PV system covers over 100,000 square feet of roof and can generate up to 1.01 megawatts of electricity in peak sunlight conditions.
Origins of the Project
New York Governor George Pataki first announced plans to build the Fala project on Earth Day in 2001. The project is part of LIPA’s Solar Pioneer Program, one element of the Clean Energy Initiative created by Governor Pataki in 1999 to promote the development of renewable energy and lower Long Island’s electricity rates which, at the time, were among the highest in the nation.
Fala initiated the project by asking LIPA for assistance in developing state of the art technology to generate electricity for its business facilities. The company wanted to reduce its $1.5 million yearly energy costs as well as achieve environmental benefits, a goal in line with Fala’s owners’ commitment to the environment. Because of the company’s location on a highly utilized circuit, LIPA saw the proposed project as an ideal opportunity to test how a large PV project would interact with the electric grid. Sharon Laudisi of LIPA describes the project as "a perfect fit" for the two organizations to achieve their respective goals.
LIPA provided a research and development grant of $4.1 million to underwrite the cost of the system. The agency assigned a program manager to the project, helped design the system, and handled the commissioning and interconnection of the system. In return, Fala provides LIPA with access to data and regular reports about the system’s performance. The agreement provides that renewable energy credits generated by the project become the property of LIPA.
Fala’s decision to install a PV system on the roof of the three buildings was part of a larger effort to improve the energy efficiency of its facilities. The company also retrofitted its lighting and air conditioning systems in order to reduce its energy consumption. In addition to removing air conditioning units that were located on the roofs of the buildings, Fala replaced old roofs on two of the three buildings prior to installing the PV system.
Design, Installation, and Financing
Powerlight Corporation designed and installed the system using Shell Solar PV panels. The building-integrated PV system is composed of Powerguard interlocking panels installed over a waterproof roof membrane. The lightweight panels, weighing 5.5 pounds per square foot, are designed to remain on the roof without the use of glue or racks even during heavy winds. In addition to generating electricity, the panels reduce heating and cooling costs by insulating the building, and extend the roof’s life by protecting its membrane from UV rays and thermal degradation.
Fala’s efforts to obtain $2 million to finance the PV system posed the project’s greatest challenge. The parties spent several months trying to educate bankers and correct some of their misconceptions about PV technology. For example, some bankers initially thought that the panels were a type of intellectual property that could be used exclusively in the Fala system but nowhere else. Banks which had no experience loaning money for PV projects were reluctant to accept the PV panels as collateral to secure their loans. After learning that there wasn’t a strong developed secondary market for PV panels, they were concerned that, if Fala defaulted on the loan, they would have difficulty reselling the 13,464 panels used in the system. Finally, M&T Bank based in Buffalo agreed to loan the money after Shell and PowerLight provided a guarantee that they would remarket or repurchase the solar panels in case of default.
Other challenges to the project included a snowy winter followed by a rainy spring which interfered with the construction schedule; educating Keyspan about the system’s interconnection with the grid; and the logistics of installing a massive system that required forty miles of wiring and four miles of conduit. However, once installation commenced, it proceeded more quickly than anticipated. The system was installed in four weeks—less than half the time originally projected. Bruce Humenik, of Applied Energy Group, a consultant hired by LIPA to work on the project, found that cooperative problem solving by the organizations involved was the key to its success. He believes a "collaborative approach really made this work."
Since installation in the autumn of 2002, the systems have performed very well with only minor repairs and maintenance. The peak capacities of the systems installed on the three buildings are 612 kW, 205kW and 193 KW. Thus, the system on the largest building is approximately three times larger than the systems on the two other buildings. Initially, Fala wanted to install the system on only one building but Powerlight found that shading would interfere with the system’s operation if they tried to squeeze all of the PV tiles onto one roof.
Because of Fala’s 24-hour operating schedule, Fala has large energy needs and uses all of the electricity generated by the PV system to power its operations. It continues to purchase additional electricity from the grid. Powerlight and Fala have the ability to monitor the system through the Internet. They can visually observe the roof systems via a webcam and also obtain data about the system’s performance online.
The system is expected to reduce Fala’s annual energy consumption by 20%. LIPA projects that during the PV system’s projected 25-year lifetime, the solar electricity will avoid emitting over 20,000 tons of carbon dioxide, more than 30 tons of nitrous oxides and more than 75 tons of sulfur dioxide from burning fossil fuels. To achieve equivalent levels of emission reductions would require planting 5,700 acres of trees, removing 3,900 cars from Long Island roads, or not driving almost 50,000,000 miles. If the amount of electricity produced by Fala’s PV system was generated using oil, it would require 45,000 barrels of oil, with the fuel alone costing more than $1.5 million (at $35 per barrel).
Janet McGarry recently graduated from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, where she studied climate change and renewable energy.
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