By Glen Kizer

This title to this blog story will come as no surprise to anyone who I have talked to for more than 5 minutes over the past two years.  First of all, a little bit of background.  Of course, I love solar school projects because solar school projects are the ultimate multi-task educational platform.

Solar electricity on a school provides:
•    A teaching tool for students learning about energy, electricity, renewable energy, math and science.  In some schools they use the solar and the sun to involve art and art history, mythology, and religion.  The kids get to see the live data and do spreadsheets and projections, and play with their numbers from their solar electricity system rather than be limited to someone else’s numbers on someone else’s project.

•    A working model to introduce school administration officials and local community leaders to solar electricity.  If a school building in your community has a 1 kW PV system, you can use the data from that 1 kW and multiply it by 10 or 20 or 50 or 150 to determine how much electricity you would get from a larger system in that same neighborhood.  You do not have to look at a map and guess because you have a working 1 kW model in your neighborhood providing you with current data.

•    It does generate electricity from sunlight so it does reduce pollution if only in small amounts.

•    It also helps for everyone to see the panels and to get used to them generating electricity in their community.

Now a solar thermal fire station that takes the heat of the sun (not the sunlight itself) and heats water for use in cooking and cleaning and washing at the firehouse seems totally removed from a solar electricity system on a school building.  They seem to be apples and oranges…solar electricity and solar thermal heating.  But here is what I have been arguing to anyone who would listen: Solar thermal fire stations are as close as we will ever get to solar electricity schools.

Here are my reasons:
•    Fire stations like schools are in almost every neighborhood in the United States.  Every group of homes needs a school and a fire station.

•    Kids learn in schools and schools take their students to fire stations to learn about fires and fire trucks and carbon monoxide and a long list of things that can now include solar energy.

•    Most solar school projects have on line data so students can compare the electricity generation in Columbus, Ohio with Fresno, California and Apple River, Illinois and Houston, Texas.  Now solar thermal fire station projects will also include on line data so students will be able to compare the heat generated on the fire station on their street with the fire stations in other locations that also have these solar thermal water heating systems on their rooftops.

•    We make sure that solar schools install solar electricity panels that are visible from the school grounds.  Solar thermal water-heating systems must be angled up to catch the winter sun so they are almost always visible from the grounds of the fire stations.

•    Fire stations are run by Fire Chiefs and Principals operate schools and both fire chiefs and school principals are no nonsense people who can be very persuasive. There are so many solar schools around the world because school principals want them and it is hard to say no to a school principal.  There can now be a lot of solar thermal fire stations because fire chiefs are as close as you can get to a school principle as anyone.  Fire chiefs are tough and demanding and if they can be provided proof the economics are positive then I doubt you will find many city budget directors telling them they can’t do it.

So I am excited about our first solar thermal fire station which just went in on a fire station in Richmond, California.  The first one was going to be on the Washington Township Fire Station at Hard Road and Riverside Drive in Dublin, Ohio, but that can be the second station.  I am sure that Denise Franz King of Washington Township will not care that she had to be second so long as she gets her system.

There will be a series of blog stories about this project and the data will be on all of our web sites and there will be a lot of pictures because it is the first one and we want everyone to understand why we created the project the way we did and why this makes it easier to replicate and how it all contributes to a positive economic spreadsheet.  Cities typically are down on money so we had to make these projects able to pay for themselves.  PG&E actually paid for the Richmond fire station project, but they did so in a way that enables us to build future projects based on the numbers from this one station.  And we owe Karalee Browne of PG&E a tremendous thanks for her vision and her leadership on this project. (By the time this goes on line she and Travis will have their second son-she is really about to deliver as I type this, and she visited the fire station on one of her last days prior to going on pregnancy leave, which shows you how much she supported this project).

All in all the news is good.  The pollution reduction numbers are excellent and they are local.  Less natural gas is burned inside any community where solar thermal water heating is taking place because less natural gas is actually burned in any building using solar thermal heating.  These are good projects and the first one is up and running.  In the next two months we will run a number of stories looking at this project from different perspectives because this is the model from which the rest will be built so understanding is the key.

More pix and the data link will be in the next blog story.  The fire station is Richmond Fire Station No. 68 on Bayview in Richmond.  The fire chief is Michael Banks. The system is Heliodyne, Inc. The installer is SunWater Solar, Inc.  Heliodyne and SunWater are both located In Richmond.  Do you see the connection between jobs and renewable energy?  If not, don’t worry you will.

By Glen Kizer

Recently I was climbing over the solar panels on the roof of the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California (http://www.jcccnc.org ) when I realized why I love my job so much.  A lot of the time I get to have fun while I am working.  Alyssa Newman and I were on the roof with Ken Maeshiro, Special Events Coordinator and Facilities Manager from the Japanese Cultural Center and they were both doing very serious work having to do with the data collection system.  I really had no reason to be on the roof except that I had gone along with them.  I had my camera with me so I guess I was the “cameraman.”  In truth, we had more professionally taken pictures so I had to honestly admit to myself that I had climbed up onto this roof in the middle of Japantown (Nihonmachi) about a mile from downtown San Francisco because I like to climb on roof tops.

The array is about 30 kW so it should generate about 50,000 kWh of clean solar electricity every year, but we will be able to confirm exact numbers when the data collection system is up and running and on line.  This is another in a series of projects done around San Francisco as part of PG&E’s “Let’s Green this City” initiative.

Everyone at the Japanese Cultural and Community Center is very nice and they have covered all of the open space on their roof to get the most solar electricity out of the space they have available.  There are several interesting things about this project that I would like to share with you.

1.    When the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 hit, there were a lot of fires that burned down many homes and businesses.  The fire stopped at the area that is now Japantown.  Because of this, many people who had lost their homes moved into Japantown.  And because of the need for businesses to replace those lost in the Great Earthquake and subsequent fire, many homes were raised and businesses were put in underneath the raised homes…creating the mixed-use neighborhoods that modern day San Francisco is famous for today.

2.    They do things at the Japanese Cultural Center that I had never anticipated.  They have a number of cultural programs to help Japanese Americans learn about Japanese cooking and martial arts and arts and crafts to help them connect with their heritage.  They have programs of general interest like teaching about computers; and they open their facilities for many non-profit organizations around the City that are looking for meeting places.  They also have a huge gym and they have lots of exercise programs for families and children.

3.    Parking is a problem, so take lots of quarters…I mean a bag of quarters if you plan to stay long inside the Center.
4.    Solar City (and Alyssa) put in the touch screen kiosk so that people can learn about solar energy, read this blog site, and see live solar data from many of the PG&E Solar School Projects.  After one of the gym classes ended, many in the class drifted out into the main hallway and started reading the kiosk information.  I then noticed a funny thing.  They were all reading a story “Me-O-My-O Cleveland Ohio,” a blog story written by my son Alex about the ASES Conference in Cleveland, Ohio in 2007.  I called him in Washington DC to tell him that a bunch of parents and their kids were reading his story in downtown San Francisco.  The world really is getting flatter…if only we had more parking.

By Katie Kizer

Very few individuals like change.  In fact, at times it is difficult to find people who will even accept it. Say you tell someone they must overhaul conventional wisdom for a new way of doing things, and that the reason is difficult to understand.

It’s easy to assume that people are not likely to respond well, except that this is how the solar issue is often framed.

Many doubt our need to consume more renewable energy, use less fossil fuels, stem the effects of global warming and lessen our dependence on foreign energy. Despite our natural fear of change, it has been and continues to be absolutely, unequivocally, and undeniably necessary to make this change happen.

The energy situation is becoming more and more dire. All of us must find a better way to stand on our own two feet, as Americans and as citizens of the world.  Father Tom Kasputis realized this and took it into his own hands to do the unthinkable.  He created environmental change at St. Rene School in Chicago.

Originally, Father Tom investigated the possibility of a solar roof along with the maintenance department at St. Rene, and discovered that it was just not the right time.  The Archdiocese would not agree to the project quite yet, so he knew he would have to wait.  Eventually, however, the political climate shifted and Father Tom knew it was time to revisit the project.  After a few bumps in the road, he eventually discovered that they could apply for grants to supplement the cost.

And so, the enthusiasm began to grow.

“The school board and faculty became excited, and so the brainstorming began to figure out how to implement the solar energy into the science curriculum.” Father Tom told me that these six panels are just the beginning.  Ideally, he would like to see all of the roofs covered with panels one day.  He is well aware that this is going to be a step-by-step process, but his goals remain ambitious. After all, it was Father Tom’s persistence that gave the community surrounding St. Rene the little push it needed to dive headfirst into the green revolution.

“This project means not only learning within the classrooms but shaping the minds of the next generation to believe in this issue.”  While I was pressing Father Tom about all the tedious issues relating to timeline and funding, he kept returning to the concern of our next generation.  When asked what the one thing he would like to say for the record in regards to the installation at his school, the Pastor said “we must take steps to come up with even better solutions for the future.”  He emphasized how this project will allow the children of the next generation to use their ideas and creativity to come up with these innovations.  Just as we women have the generations before to thank for opening the door for our civil rights, the children of tomorrow will have those who stand with Father Tom to thank for the hard work required to truly implement renewable energies into these institutions.  These activists have done the leg work and the convincing of those many skeptics; now all that we need to do as the next generation is execute and follow through. We can’t afford to wait.