If there’s one thing Southern Arizona has plenty of, it’s sun. It is Arizona’s most abundant renewable source of energy. Plenty of sun equals a great place to develop solar power.
In recent years, two European solar companies, Solon America Corporation and Schletter Inc., established their respective first United States offices in Tucson.
 Global Solar is expanding into Germany as well as working on filling out its new facilities at 8500 S. Rita Road.Photo courtesy of Global Solar |
"Pursuing the chances of solar-power across the globe, we decided to start our U.S. operations in Tucson," said Martin Hausner, CEO of Schletter Inc. in the company’s announcement. "We looked at locations in Phoenix and Flagstaff, as well as cities in Colorado and California, but we found Tucson most appealing."
Tucson is one of 25 cities designated as a Solar America City by the U.S. Department of Energy. Of the 25, Tucson is the only one the department labels as having excellent resource potential for flat plate collectors.
"Certainly, the intensity of the sun is very strong here," said Dennis Dickerson, environmental planning director with the Pima Association of Governments (PAG) and a member of the Southern Arizona Regional Solar Partnership. "But the intensity is more of a relationship with the region’s latitude."
Solar radiation, or insolation, from the sun is most intense at the equator. The further north and south a place is from the equator, the less intense the insolation.
"So, any other location in the world with the same latitude as Tucson could potentially be a good location for solar activity," he said. "But then you have to factor in things like cloudiness, or rain. The more clear days you have would boost up the relative value of any particular area with regard to the effectiveness of solar power."
With more than 300 days of sunshine in a southern location in the United States, it’s hard to compete with Tucson when it comes to solar.
To create a more regional outreach in solar, the City of Tucson connected with PAG to help. From that the Southern Arizona Regional Solar Partnership was formed.
The partnership is a cooperative effort to focus attention on Southern Arizona’s natural opportunities for putting solar power to work.
"Currently, we are putting together a solar energy development plan which would in essence identify, on a regional level, a lot of different activities that need to be addressed in order to promote additional solar energy in the area," Dickerson said.
Arizona is already home to one of the nation’s largest solar power arrays at Springerville providing five megawatts of electricity to Tucson Electric Power (TEP).
The City of Tucson is looking to build some projects in the future on this scale and has been putting solar systems on buildings since 1999, said Bruce Plenk, the city’s solar energy coordinator.
There are currently around 220 kilowatts of photovoltaic systems at several city buildings. A new project the city has accepted bids for would triple that amount.
Tucson has been awarded authorization by Congress to sell up to $7.7 million in Clean Renewable Energy Bonds (CREBs). The first project with that is to spend $5 million to $6 million to add 600 kilowatts to seven different city buildings.
The city is reviewing bids on a second project for a one- to five-megawatt solar field in Avra Valley for the Central Avra Valley Storage and Recovery Project pumping station.
"The largest electric bill the City of Tucson pays is for pumping water," Plenk said. "It is pumped here through the Central Arizona Project canal, it is pumped into the ground, pumped out of the ground and pumped over the mountain to get here. That facility uses four to five megawatts of power."
For the project the city is utilizing a power purchase agreement where a third party will develop the field and the city agrees to purchase the power for a fixed amount per kilowatt hour for 20 years.
"It is a great deal when you don’t know what will happen to the price of electricity at TEP," he said.
Also in discussions currently is another solar project in Avra Valley that would be a concentrating solar project, in which many mirrors concentrate the sun’s energy on a single tower filled with mineral oil or some fluid that is heated up to somewhere near 700 degrees. The heat energy creates gases that spin turbines and generate electricity. There is currently a 25-acre, one megawatt concentrating solar plant in Red Rock.
Newer technologies and ideas are taking solar power down new paths that hadn’t been thought of just a few years ago.
Global Solar Energy, 8500 S. Rita Road, is working with Dow Chemical Company utilizing Global Solar’s flexible Copper Indium Gallium diSelenide, CIGS, technology to develop solar roofing products.
"We are never going to get there with heavy glass panels," said Tim Teich, vice president of sales and marketing for Global Solar. "We need to apply solar material right to the building. That’s where the industry is headed."
Global Solar moved into a new building and upped its output as a solar manufacturer 10 times from four megawatts to 40 megawatts per year. The company recently opened an office in a bio tech park in Berlin, Germany, that by the end of this year will produce an additional 30 megawatts. By the end of next year, Global Solar will fill out its current facilities with an expected total output of 140 megawatts.
"So between the two we will be producing 170 megawatts of material annually," Teich said. "Which is a lot when you consider how small the solar industry is globally."
Last year the entire solar manufacturing industry produced around three gigawatts (1,000 megawatts), Teich said, which he compared to the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station that produced four gigawatts of electricity alone.
"One nuclear power plant is bigger than the entire solar industry," he said. "So solar has a long way it can go. It is driven by economics and we need to begin to commercialize the technology, which is happening now. Large companies are changing their plans to include solar energy and I think the next few years are going to see huge growth in that field."
Global Solar entered into a power purchase agreement and a CIGS solar field is being installed on Global Solar’s property that will supply 25 to 30 percent of its power. It will come online this fall.
One hurdle the industry faces this year is the set expiration of the Investment Tax Credit is scheduled for the end of the year.
"There is legislation proposed to extend it. But it is in the midst of a partisan battle in Congress," said Dickerson. "Not extending it would really slow down the conversion to solar at a time when we really need to have more investment in solar."
The credit currently provides 30 percent tax incentive on solar projects.
Teich hopes to get to the point where companies won’t need that incentive to make solar projects worthwhile.
"For the next few years, we do need the federal, state and local government initiatives to fuel this industry," he said. But it will get to a point in the next five years where it doesn’t have to be funded that way."
Dickerson agrees and said he believes by 2013 there will be cost parody between solar energy and conventional methods.
Katherine Kent is owner of The Solar Store, 2833 N. Country Club Road, a solar systems installer. She has seen significant growth in residential home solar systems already.
"Our independent builders around town such as Pepper-Viner Homes, Doucette Communities, John Wesley Miller Companies, are all moving to embrace solar energy and putting it as an option or even standard on their homes now," she said. "Last year, new home construction was probably 25 percent of our business and now it is 35 to 40 percent."
She said she believes while Tucson is a great location for solar, she sees Santa Fe, N.M., doing a better job at attracting companies.
"They have made it economically viable for those companies to move in," Kent said. "I don’t see our state doing that at all."
However, she did say Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano is putting together a new group to look at positioning the state better to attract more companies.
With the infrastructure in place mixed with the sunny skies, it shouldn’t be too difficult.
Contact reporter Joe Pangburn at jpangburn@azbiz.com or (520) 295-4259.
Fast Facts according to Arizona Research Institute for Solar Energy (AZRISE)
The five main hurdles facing the solar industry:
• Reduce the cost of the solar cells
• Increase the efficiency of the solar cells
• Improve concentrator system technologies for large power plants
• Develop adequate storage devices
• Improve energy conservation, automotive and building efficiency
Why Solar:
•Abundant, unlimited supply
•No carbon dioxide after the cells are fabricated
•Use with little maintenance
•Energy source is free
Why Arizona:
•Solar is the most abundant renewable source of energy in Arizona
•Average annual solar energy flux 7.5 kilowatt hours per meter squared per day is almost twice the flux in the northeast
•Flat pane photovoltaic uses very little water
•Rooftop area can provide sufficient energy annually for a house of the same size
The big picture:
•Less than one quarter of one percent of Arizona’s land could generate all of the state’s current electricity needs
•This area is 285 square miles (about 14 miles by 20 miles) which is roughly the size of lake Powell – so one "solar dam" could do it all
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