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Watch for my blog posts from Solar Power 2007 and don't spill the wine |
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Sep 25, 2007 at 08:15 AM |
I'll be going down to the allegedly largest solar power event in the States this week, the Solar Power 2007 conference and exhibition in Long Beach.
Look for some blog musings from the show later in the week. Not only will I be checking out various links in the supply and value chains of Planet Sun, but I will be riding the Los Angeles blue-line light rail from downtown L.A. to the second-largest city in L.A. county, Long Beach (and a ferocious commute from my house if one chooses to drive it). Now if I could just find a luminous green suit for the occasion....
My favorite photovoltaically oriented story from this week's Solarbuzz NBuzz newsletter (check my blog/Web roll for a linked look-see at their site) has a good finish. Seems the EOS winery in Paso Robles in California's central coastal viticultural wonderland (remember the film Sideways? It's north of where that took place) has embarked on a project to go totally solar powered. I find the synergy between sun and grape to be too flavorful to pass up. Here's the announcement:
The EOS Estate Winery today announced plans to convert its facility entirely to solar power. The $3.8 million project, including the installation of more than two acres of ground-mounted tracking solar arrays that will provide all of the electrical power needs for the winery and tasting room, will make EOS the largest winery in California's Central Coast to run completely on alternative energy. Additional roof-mounted solar arrays will provide all the hot-water needs. The project is due to be completed by April.
"At EOS, we believe strongly in producing our wines in a way that is friendly to the land and the environment as a whole," said Jeff Hopmayer, the new owner of the EOS Estate Winery. "Because of the abundant sunshine, California is the perfect place to harvest solar power and utilize it to create our award-winning wines."
SunTechnics will install the new system. The EOS system will contain 3,084 photovoltaic modules totaling 540 kWp and 60 solar hot-water collectors. The system can save the equivalent of 360 acres of planted trees and over 21,000 tons of CO2 saved over 25 years. SunTechnics will use state-of-the-art single-axis technology that actively tracks the sun's path as it moves across the sky throughout the day.
"Standard solar power systems harvest the sun's power only at peak levels during the day," said Florian Edler, CEO of SunTechnics Energy Systems. "The system that we created for EOS will follow the sun all day avoiding any shading. This will allow EOS to operate on 100% solar power in the most efficient way possible."
I raise my glass to EOS and SunTechnics on this delicious piece of green-tech adoption. I wonder if they've run the numbers of grapes crushed and bottles produced per year per module installed? Now that's a new efficiency metric.
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