FONTANA, California, December 1, 2008 (ENS) – The roof of a distribution warehouse in Fontana is now covered with 33,700 advanced thin-film solar panels, making it the largest single rooftop solar photovoltaic array in California and the nation’s largest solar installation program by a utility.

Southern California Edison unveiled the completed solar roof today as the first of its proposed 150 solar photovoltaic installations on Southern California commercial rooftops.

The $875 million project could eventually cover two square miles of existing commercial roofs with 250 million watts of peak generating capacity – equivalent to building several utility-scale solar power plants, the company said.

Ted Craver, Edison International chairman and CEO, said, “We are driving solar technology forward and identifying creative new ways to integrate solar power into the electricity grid. A program of this scale could transform solar generation, helping bring costs down and providing us with another important way to meet the environmental challenges of the future.”

Workers install thin-film solar panels on the
roof of a Fontana distribution warehouse.
(Photo courtesy Edison International)

The 600,000 square foot Fontana distribution warehouse roof facility now generates enough power during peak output conditions to power 1,300 Inland Empire homes.

“Here in California, we are taking action to protect the environment by passing laws and setting standards and our companies and entrepreneurs are rising to the challenge,” said Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who attended the unveiling of the solar rooftop facility in Fontana. “Projects like this one show the world you can protect the environment and also pump up the economy, and I am proud to say it is happening right here in California.”

Southern California Edison officials today announced the location of their next solar installation site. The utility will begin construction soon atop a 458,000 square-foot industrial building in Chino, owned by the Multi-Employer Property Trust.

The solar panel supplier for the Fontana installation, First Solar of Tempe, Arizona, is also the winning bidder for the utility’s second installation.

“This pilot program is sited in the high peak load areas and will provide efficiencies to the grid while creating hundreds of jobs in California,” said John Carrington, First Solar executive vice president of global marketing and business development.

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers is supporting the project through the expansion of its solar installation apprentice training program.

The program will provide a new generation source to areas where customer demand is rising. The solar modules will feed electricity back into the grid. They can be connected directly and quickly to the nearest neighborhood circuit while major new renewable energy transmission lines are being built.

And the output of solar panels generally matches peak customer demand – lower in the morning and evening, higher in the afternoon.

SCE’s commercial rooftop project was prompted by advances in solar technology that reduce the cost of installed photovoltaic generation to half that of current similar installations.

The solar panels are made of materials that convert sunlight directly into electricity through a chemical process.

Thin semiconductor layers form an electric field, positive on one side and negative on the other side. When sunlight strikes the semiconductor, electrons are knocked loose from the atoms of the material, creating the current. Wires are attached to the positive and negative sides to carry the electricity from the solar cell to the device to be powered.

With its solar rooftop program, the utility hopes to fill a gap it has observed in current rooftop solar projects in the state – mid-range installations of one to two megawatts.

SCE’s solar project also is designed to supplement the Go Solar California campaign, which provides incentives to encourage Californians to install solar projects by 2017.

The SCE program supports the state’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which requires the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, as well as complementing California’s renewable portfolio standard, the goal that 20 percent of state’s electricity be generated with renewable energy.

Last month Governor Schwarzenegger signed an executive order to streamline California’s renewable energy project approval process and announced his plans to propose expansion of the state’s renewable portfolio standard to 33 percent renewable power by 2020.

The utility received its first regulatory response to the commercial rooftop solar project on September 18, 2008, when the California Public Utilities Commission authorized the recording of costs for the first three installations while SCE awaits regulatory review and response to the entire project due in March 2009.

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SAN DIEGO, California, October 24, 2008 (ENS) – A gas used in manufacture of flat panel televisions, computer displays, microcircuits, and thin-film solar panels is 17,000 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and it is far more prevalent in the atmosphere than previously estimated.

The powerful greenhouse gas nitrogen trifluoride, NF3, is at least four times more widespread than scientists had believed, according to new research by a team at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

Using new analytical techniques, a team led by Scripps geochemistry professor Ray Weiss made the first atmospheric measurements of nitrogen trifluoride, NF3.

“Accurately measuring small amounts of NF3 in air has proven to be a very difficult experimental problem, and we are very pleased to have succeeded in this effort,” Weiss said Thursday, announcing the results of his team’s research.

The research findings will be published October 31 in “Geophysical Research Letters,” a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

Scripps geoscientists Ray Weiss, left, and Jens
Muehle show cylinders used to collect air
samples that they analyzed for
concentrations of nitrogen trifluoride.
(Photo courtesy Scripps Institution of
Oceanography, UC San Diego)

The amount of the gas in the atmosphere, which could not be detected using previous techniques, had been estimated at less than 1,200 metric tons in 2006. The new research shows the actual amount was 4,200 metric tons.

In 2008, about 5,400 metric tons of the gas was in the atmosphere, a quantity that is increasing at about 11 percent per year.

This rate of increase means that about 16 percent of the amount of the gas produced globally is being emitted into the atmosphere, the researchers estimate.

Emissions of NF3 were thought to be so low that the gas was not considered to be a significant potential contributor to global warming.

Nitrogen trifluoride was not covered by the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions signed by 182 countries, although three other fluoride compounds are covered.

The protocol governs the emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide as well as other fluoride compounds – sulfur hexafluoride, hydrofluorocarbons, and perfluorocarbons.

In response to the growing use of the gas and concerns that its emissions are not well known, the scientists have recommended adding it to the list of greenhouse gases regulated by the protocol or its successor agreement now under negotiation.

“From a climate perspective, there is a need to add NF3 to the suite of greenhouse gases whose production is inventoried and whose emissions are regulated under the Kyoto Protocol, thus providing meaningful incentives for its wise use,” said Weiss.

Nitrogen trifluoride is one of several gases used during the manufacture of liquid crystal flat-panel displays, thin-film photovoltaic cells and microcircuits.

Many industries have used the gas in recent years as an alternative to perfluorocarbons, which are also potent greenhouse gases, because it was believed that no more than two percent of the NF3 used in these processes escaped into the atmosphere.

To obtain their information, the Scripps team analyzed air samples gathered in California and Tasmania over the past 30 years by the NASA-funded Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment network of ground-based stations.

The network was created in the 1970s in response to international concerns about chemicals depleting the ozone layer. It is supported by NASA as part of its congressional mandate to monitor ozone-depleting trace gases, many of which are also greenhouse gases.

The researchers found concentrations of NF3 rose from about 0.02 parts per trillion in 1978 to 0.454 parts per trillion in 2008.

Higher concentrations of NF3 were found in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern Hemisphere, which the researchers said is consistent with its greater use in Northern Hemisphere countries.

“This result reinforces the critical importance of basic research in determining the overall impact of the information technology industry on global climate change, which has already been estimated to be equal to that of the aviation industry,” said Larry Smarr, director of the California Institute for Telecommunications at University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the Scripps study.

Michael Prather is a University of California, Irvine atmospheric chemist who predicted earlier this year that based on the rapidly increasing use of NF3, larger amounts of the gas would be found in the atmosphere. Prather said the new Scripps study provides the confirmation needed to establish reporting requirements for production and use of the gas.

“I’d say case closed. It is now shown to be an important greenhouse gas,” said Prather, who was not involved with the Scripps study. “Now we need to get hard numbers on how much is flowing through the system, from production to disposal.”

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