Colleges Go Solar

[irishbobcat]

By John Lindt
Sierra2theSea News Service

Published Dec. 8, 2010

From the Kennebec Valley in Maine to California's Central Valley,  colleges are installing solar panels and then going a step further – teaching students how to do it.

With the U.S. unemployment rate rising this month to 9.8 percent, many community colleges and some four-year schools are preparing for a productive energy future in which demand for well-trained solar technicians takes off.

Ground zero is the extensive California Community Colleges system, where numerous campuses have been adding solar modules by the megawatt this year.

One example is West Hills College in the sere Central Valley, where plans for a 6- to 7-megawatt solar farm are moving forward with an April 1 groundbreaking schedule. Two years ago, such an installation would have ranked as one of the largest in the country. But in the Central Valley, hundreds of megawatts of solar photovoltaic installations are on the drawing board, not including the ones that homeowners are considering, along with a few colossal proposals that haven't yet filed plans.

The West Hills photovoltaic array, on 39 acres, is designed to cover 100 percent of the power needs for all three campuses in the college district, said Kevin Cobb, principal architect with AP Architects of Bakersfield. The junior college has campuses in Coalinga, Lemoore and Mendota. The project will be located at a new college "farm of the future" being built on 200-plus acres near Coalinga.

"The project is funded through multiple sources, and bidding to build it will take place in February," Mr. Cobb said. The energy will be sold to Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

The green-energy installation on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley is just one of a dozen utility-size projects now being built or in the approval stages for this part of California, considered desirable because of the high solar intensity, cheap land and convenient grid connection options.

Then there is the fact that solar and education seem to go together.

Besides the one at West Hills College, Mr. Cobb said his firm has designed several community college solar projects in the Kern County desert (including one at Copper Mountain College) and is working on a smaller array for Porterville College on the less sunny east side of the Valley. Southern California Edison is now building a 29,000-panel solar array in Porterville on 34 acres.