Small town, big news

The South Miami City Commission voted Tuesday evening to require all new houses (and existing houses undergoing significant renovations) to install photovoltaic panels. The measure puts our small city in rare company; only three cities in California have similar measures. While the new law will only affect a few houses every year, it will probably have far-reaching consequences across the Sunshine State.

interview

Students in the Broadcast Media program of FIU's School of Communication + Journalism came to tin box a few weeks ago to shoot footage for a class project on renewable energy. Their finished project is pretty good. Forgive the small video - Blogger restricts file sizes, so the video here is a little small.

The two students leading the project–Erica Santiago and Diana Guarnizo–are also producing a longer video that explores larger questions of social and ecological sustainability at tin box. We look forward to posting that later this spring!

in praise of field modifications

Our steel erectors are back for a few days to finish up some details. John (left) and Mike put up the last pieces of trim along the top ridge of the upper roof. They modified the trim to act as a raceway protecting the cables for the photovoltaic panels, eliminating the need for the clunky PVC box that normally accompanies the Uni-solar panels. This improvisation is one of the best field modifications in the project, so far.

utilities and services

Earlier this week, our photovoltaic (solar-electric) installer connected the wires for the p/v panels through the holes we'd carefully drilled through the steel trim at the top of the upper roof. These wires will be concealed beneath, and protected by, the final piece of trim that gets installed as a cap over the top edges of the roof's standing seams. Once the cap trim is in place, the roof will be finished.

David drilling holes

David has been drilling holes at the top of the roof this weekend so that the wiring for the solar panels can be hidden under a piece of trim.

We also sprayed in more insulation in the mechanical lofts. It's our weekend to be monkeys.

solar power, installation details

Some detail photos of the solar panels, up close.

These are peel-and-stick, amorphous silicon, thin film panels that arrive rolled up with a plastic backer sheet. The installers washed the roof and made chalk lines to align the panels down the center of each roof panel, laid out the p/v panels one at a time, rolled them back up and peeled the backer off as they laid them down permanently. The whole process looked like they were installing giant bumper stickers.

solar power, continued

And just like that, the 40 photovoltaic panels were set in place today. Jordan, Jorge and the crew from Electron Solar set the p/v panels in pairs in between the standing seams. Each photovoltaic panel is 15.5 inches wide; they're designed to sit within the 16-inch spacing of standard standing seam metal roofing, but our panels are 42" wide, which allows us to mount two p/v panels side by side between the roof's seams.

unintended irony, parking meter edition

It's great to see how seriously California and its cities are working to increase the state's sustainably generated electricity capacity, and to establish an infrastructure for charging electric cars. But you still see stuff like this: p/v-equipped parking meters with their panels pointed east (huh?), shading each other. Oy.

solar decathlon

FIU just produced a video of the university's entry into the 2011 Solar Decathlon, sponsored by the US Department of Energy. The FIU project was terrific in a lot of ways, especially in the way it incorporated passive solar shading and hurricane protection elegantly. The project was designed by an interdisciplinary team of students, led by my architecture department colleague, Marilys Nepomechie and including Eric Peterson (who helped assemble the project in both Miami and Washington) and Brett Moss.

The accompanying news article is online.

unintended irony, golf cart edition

photo by Adam Feinstein

Kudos to FIU for investing in golf carts with solar panels on the roof. Self-powering vehicles are an ingenious idea, especially in a sunny place like Miami. It will work more efficiently, though, when the drivers stop parking in the shade.

Our pursuit of more sustainable practices sometimes requires rethinking pretty good habits. Generally speaking, it's a good idea to park in the shade in Miami. Our black bicycle saddles reach osso-bucco-braising temperatures after just a minute in the sun, and the Prius gets hotter than an EasyBake oven if you leave it in the sunlight. It's probably hard to break these habits when you sit behind the wheel of an electric golf cart. And there are probably much bigger paradigms we need to change as we retool our civilization to prevent catastrophic climate change.

design and kitsch

great machine, silly design

Don’t get me wrong, South Miami’s new parking meters are great. They take credit cards and cash, and the system allows you to pay by phone. They even have photovoltaic panels which, presumably, generate electricity. So why do these cool new machines have such silly designs?

It wasn’t that long ago that television manufacturers mercifully stopped making sets that looked like pieces of wood furniture. The design disciplines have often suffered from a tendency to shy away from the formal potential offered by new technologies, materials and functions, and instead draped objects in the kitschy garb of the familiar and cliché. Nostalgia, provoked by an anxious fear of the present, is a powerful inertial force weighing on the design arts.

embodied energy and energy use

“Statistics are merciless things.” Le Corbusier, The City of To-morrow and its Planning, 126.

The Department of Energy has posted a lot of useful data on energy use in the United States, which helps identify the low hanging fruit for big gains in energy efficiency. Some of the key take-aways: Americans consume one fifth of the world’s energy. Two-fifths of that energy is consumed in and by buildings, with 22% going into our houses. 91% of that energy produces carbon or radiation. And, most depressingly, nearly half our energy is lost in transmission and distribution.

solar decathlon

Models of the 20 finalists in the Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon competition are on view online at Jetson Green, a pretty good blog about sustainable construction.

A promising sign for Florida is that two entries come from the Sunshine State. Our favorite is the FIU entry. Check out their blog, or, better yet, stop by the site (one the main campus, just of SW 8th Street) before the house relocates to Washington in late September.

more thoughts from the frecciarossa

Solar energy is big in Emilia Romagna, the rich (both culturally and agriculturally) region that includes Parma, Modena, Bologna, Ravenna and Rimini. The combination of financial incentives, social concerns and abundant sunshine have spurred the widespread adoption of solar panels on both a micro and macro scale. Small-scale rooftop installations have appeared on individual farmhouses and barns, and large-scale solar farms are increasingly common. In a landscape of field crops, orchards and vineyards, photovoltaic panels are sprouting in between their photosynthetic neighbors.

fiat lux

Check out the large array of solar hot water panels at the Vatican. This is one of at least two solar installations at the Vatican. The other is a gorgeous photovoltaic array atop the audience hall designed by Pier Luigi Nervi.

Back in the US, the New York Times summarized an industry report on solar-generated electricity that includes a juicy list of the top ten p/v states in the union.

best practices

A very helpful document from the Department of Energy (who also sponsor the Solar Decathlon competition) which we've been consulting is Building America Best Practices Series: Volume 1. Builders and Buyers Handbook for Improving New Home Efficiency, Comfort, and Durability in the Hot and Humid Climate. It is available online as a free PDF file.

Fukushima and us

The continuing nuclear disaster unfolding in northern Japan makes our efforts to reduce our dependence on the electrical grid a little more urgent. In a general sense, it's important for us to limit our use of utility-generated electricity because of the numerous ways this energy source damages the environment and public health. But in a more direct way, our efforts will help prevent the construction of two new nuclear reactors in South Florida. More on that in a minute.

But first, the most important thing we're doing is not our photovoltaics. It's conservation. Every watt saved is a watt generated, or at least obviates the need to generate that watt.