Breaking News: Tuesday, February 14, 2011

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Thought for the day: Tuesday, February 14, 2011

Question: What is the one thing every single human being on the planet can do that's considered green? Whatever the answer is, multiply that by billions of human beings and you create some noticeable Green results.

Show Mom some Love on Valentine's Day by finding your own little ways to be kinder. What can you think of to make Mother Earth a little more comfortable today?

Alabama has a new NABCEP installer.

What is NABCEP, and why should Alabamians care about it?

Alabama has no requirements for solar installation. Caveat emptor (Let the buyer beware) is especially applicable in our state. While all Alabama Solar Association Solarites (professional members) are proven to be highly qualified, NABCEP is a worldwide standard that guarantees that specific solar professional has the knowledge and experience to design and build a system that will perform well under very specific conditions found on your site.

NABCEP (www.nabcep.org) is the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners. It is the “gold standard” for PV and solar heating installation certification. Designed to raise industry standards and promote consumer confidence, NABCEP offers certification and certificate programs to renewable energy professionals throughout North America and around the world. when your installer is NABCEP-certified, you can be assured they know what they are doing.

Certification of a profession refers to a generally voluntary process in which the certifying organization formally grants recognition to those who meet certain predetermined standards or qualifications. It usually includes an examination of some kind to assess the candidates’ qualifications. Certification offers the public a high degree of protection because practitioners have to meet standards or qualifications and pass an exam, and they do so voluntarily. Developing a certification is a complex and time-consuming process and requires a strong administrative organization in order to maintain its quality. Over a thousand certification programs exist in the U.S., qualifying professionals from crane operators to energy efficiency experts, from financial planners to automobile technicians.

Until the Wright Brothers began the first school of aviation in a cotton field south of Montgomery in 1910, there was no standard certification for pilots. There was no need. There were so few airplanes aloft, that pilots pretty much learned by trial and error. Today extensive and tough certifications guard pilots, passengers, and innocents on the ground. I can’t imagine flying with an uncertified pilot unless I were teaching him or her as part of the certification process.

Voluntary certification programs accomplish three important goals:

1. They provide a measure of protection to the public by giving them a credential for judging the competency of practitioners;
2. They provide practitioners with a way to distinguish themselves from their competition; and
3. By potentially improving quality, they improve the public perception of the given occupation, helping increase the industry’s prominence.

The NABCEP process has been developed and designed carefully following professional credentialing guidelines. Standards, developed by subject matter experts, have been set and the eligibility requirements are reasonably achievable being based on extensive input from stakeholders and deliberation among installers. NABCEP has built a transparent, non-discriminatory program implemented with fair procedures and due process.

Benefits of certification exist for both installers and consumers:

For installers:

• Identifies installers as professionals, instilling consumer confidence in their work
• Validates extra resources spent on training and gaining experience
• Allows for installer mobility as the market moves from state to state
• Allows installers to distinguish their skills and experience in the field

For consumers:

• Provides a means to identify qualified installers, promoting confidence in the work performed
• Preserves consumer choice, maintaining access to both certified and uncertified installers

Jeff Max of ACME Solar Works www.acmesolarworks.net in Summerdale became Alabama’s only NABCEP-certified Solar Thermal installer.

Morton Archibald, ASA president and chief engineer of Affordable Energy Solutions www.getaffordableenergy.com in Huntsville has earned the NABCEP Entry Level certification. The NABCEP Entry Level Exam is a way for candidates to demonstrate that they have achieved a basic knowledge of the fundamental principles of the application, design, installation and operation of PV systems. It’s basically a license to learn.

The nest step for Morton is to gain some more experience and then take the NABCEP PV Installer’s exam. NABCEP Certified PV Installers are highly experienced individuals who have passed a very rigorous examination and have demonstrated the capability to supervise complete system installations. They must have a detailed working knowledge of the electrical, standards, and accepted industry practice associated with PV installations.

Please consider coming to help us this Saturday, October 15^th. We meet at Morton’s house at 2117 Rothmore Drive SW in Huntsville at 10:00 AM. Go west off South Memorial Parkway onto Rothmore just north of the Mountain Gap Road traffic light and directly across from Bojangles Fried Chicken. Go about a half mile, past the house with a circle drive, and take the first left turn onto Pembrook Drive. My driveway is the first on the left.

Baby Firefly is Born

During the big grid-power outage of April-May 2011, Dad and I set up a couple sets of ASA's solar panels. We used them to recharge 12V marine batteries we purchased Thursday after the storms.

In an ideal situation, the panels would be permanently mounted to the house in a calculated orientation that maximizes input from the average position of the sun over a year. In this temporary setting, I just wanted to be able to move the panels now and then during the day to track the sun. One idea (pictured above) popped into my mind.

Now this stuff was quickly and temporarily set on my son's wagon. Perhaps in a more functional setup, the panels would be mounted a little higher up and be adjustable to accommodate various angles of elevation, and the battery would sit as low in the center of the wagon as possible, perhaps even recessed in a cutout in the floor of the wagon. The space between the battery and the panels would provide a small storage area for the controller, a small toolbox, etc. A modified wagon might be a good way to roll a setup from the car to the final display location at events, minimizing setup and tear-down times.

It’s not a very big system, but the 45-watt output will power a few CFL or LED light fixtures, recharge small appliance batteries, and even run a small refrigerator.

Let’s renew our efforts to complete Firefly into a working solar power generating station. It sure would have been helpful after the April 27^th storm or other storms yet to come. Folks on the Gulf Coast would have loved to have had some solar trailers after Katrina.

Steve Archibald
Information Director

With three damaged Japanese nuclear plants leaking and possibly melting down, Americans are naturally concerned about the safety of nuclear energy. TVA has proposed replacing existing dirty coal-fired plants with cleaner nuclear reactors (see below). This is a mixed blessing. Nuclear releases less harmful pollutants into the atmosphere, unless something goes terribly wrong, as it did in Japan.

The International Atomic Energy Agency placed a 19-mile no-fly zone around the damaged plants. The U.S. Navy Tuesday detected low levels of airborne radiation at Yokosuka and Atsugi bases, 200 miles away from the nuclear plants. Dangerous levels of radiation are still leaking from one crippled plant forced Japan to order 140,000 people to seal themselves indoors after an explosion and a fire escalated the crisis spawned by the earthquake and tsunami.

Japanese officials told the IAEA that the reactor fire was in a storage pond and that "radioactivity is being released directly into the atmosphere." Long after the fire was extinguished, a Japanese official said the pool, where used nuclear fuel is kept cool, might be boiling.

PV to the rescue! Workers set up a solar power system for a temporary office building in the town of Minamisanriku, Miyagi Prefecture, March 31. (Daisuke Uragami AP) Japanese engineers should consider replacing electricity they were getting from the disabled nuclear reactor swith photovoltaic-produced electricity the original nuclear power – solar.

We advocate nuclear power from that star we call “the sun” from 93 million miles away.

TVA publishes the master plan for serving 9 million people in seven states through 2030

TVA has completed its Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) titled TVA's Energy and Environmental Future. This plan and the associated Environmental Impact Statement are the result of extensive analysis and collaboration with TVA partners and stakeholders. Alabama Solar Association made verbal and written input into the plan. Read the entire plan at http://www.tva.com/environment/reports/irp.

The final IRP supports TVA's comprehensive mission of service, which includes meeting the electric power needs of its customers in a reliable, affordable and sustainable manner. The plan identifies the resources that will be needed to satisfy expected energy demand in the Tennessee Valley region over the next 20 years. It is consistent with TVA's Environmental Policy and it supports TVA's renewed vision to be one of the nation's leading providers of low-cost and cleaner energy by 2020. We still believe it does not give adequate weight to the potential of rooftop solar to increase renewable energy contribution and reduce transmission difficulties.

The IRP is intended to equip TVA to meet its customers' needs effectively while addressing the substantial challenges that face the electric utility industry. The planning direction it recommends will hopefully give TVA flexibility to make sound choices amid economic and regulatory uncertainty. The recommended planning direction tries to balance costs, energy efficiency and reliability, environmental responsibility, and competitive prices for customers. Components of the recommended planning direction include:

Note¹ – This range includes EEDR savings achieved through 2010. The 2020 range for EEDR and renewable energy does not preclude further investment in these resources during the following decade.
Note² – TVA's existing wind contracts that total more than 1,600 MW are included in this range. Values are nameplate capacity. Net dependable capacity would be lower.
Note³ – TVA has previously announced plans to idle 1,000 MW of coal-fired capacity, which is included in this range. MW values based on maximum net dependable capacity.
Note⁴ – This is the expected size of a new pumped-storage hydro facility.
Note⁵ – The completion of Watts Bar Unit 2 represents the lower end of this range.
Note⁶ – Up to 900 MW of new coal-fired capacity is recommended between 2025 and 2029.
Note⁷ – The completion of John Sevier combined cycle plant represents the lower end of this range.

Alabama Solar Association applauds the plan’s proposal to increase efforts on energy efficiency and renewables, but we question the wisdom and the ability of TVA to meet the timetable for nuclear. We fully support nuclear power, as long as it coed from that big nuclear power plant 93 million miles away we call the Sun. we will watch anxiously over the next years as the plan develops. We believe the inevitable spike in energy prices worldwide will drive more conservation and renewable fuels into the mix.