Solar Power

When Beth Brody of Trenton and her fiance, Robert Burger of Princeton, set out to build their "solar dream house" near Lambertville, N.J., they talked to a lot of builders about solar energy, but they didn't seem familiar with it. Finally, through an advertisement in a telephone book, the couple located Paul Peters of Sellersville, one of a handful of local builders keeping the solar faith as the urgency of the 1970s-born energy crisis fades....

The sun has not yet officially set on this year's legislative session in Harrisburg, but it has on an effort to increase the state requirement for use of solar power. "For all practical purposes, it's dead," Maureen Mulligan, lobbyist for Pennsylvania's two largest solar-advocacy groups, declared in an e-mail Monday. It's the third time in two years that a legislative proposal to boost the state's commitment to alternative energy has failed to even reach a vote in the full House or Senate.

Hoping to profit from the growing demand for renewable, large-scale solar energy, Lockheed Martin Corp. will start constructing a solar test center today at its Moorestown facility. The company said the Solar System Test and Engineering System (SolSTES) Array test bed in South Jersey will provide Lockheed Martin engineers with the opportunity to research a variety of solar technologies and materials. "This will allow us to test and model different ways to produce solar arrays and allow us to do risk reduction," Ken Ross, a spokesman for Lockheed Martin, said yesterday.

Chronar Corp. of Princeton yesterday said that it had found a partner with which to build the world's largest plant for converting sunlight to electricity. Chronar said the plant would cost about $125 million and produce 50 megawatts of electricity, seven times more than any than any other plant that uses photovoltaic cells to convert sunlight into electricity. Previously, the price of photovoltaic cells has been so high that a solar electric plant was not considered economical.

Please don't dismiss this as the ranting of some "eco-nut" or tree hugger. Just consider these points: With about 4 percent of the world's population, the United States creates about 24 percent of all greenhouse-gas emissions associated with global climate change. Energy from fossil fuels creates smog, air pollution and acid rain; poisons waterways with mercury; and causes increasing human health problems worldwide. Climate change, many scientists contend, leads to rising sea levels and flooding, unstable weather, and increased storm damage.

On the porch of a white Lancaster County farmhouse set between corn and soy bean fields, an Amish woman makes apple sauce the old-fashioned way: She crushes fruit in a manual press. Chickens run across the yard. A long line of laundry dries in the sun. But at her husband's dairy-equipment shop next door, the scene is quite different. Energy-saving fluorescent bulbs light the basement. And wiring has just been installed to run heavy machinery off the sun. Despite their reclusion from the modern world, the plain-living Amish are leading the way when it comes to embracing solar energy.

If NFI Industries' calculations are right, the three acres of solar panels just installed on the roof of its Cherry Hill headquarters will save $750,000 in energy costs over 15 years and become a green feather in its cap. The 1.32-megawatt project could also be a launchpad. It is the first renewable development designed and installed by NFI Solar, a new division in the 77-year-old trucking and logistics company, which the Brown family started as a coal-hauling operation in North Jersey.

A year and a half after first announcing plans for solar power at the Eagles' stadium, the franchise announced Thursday that it had teamed up with a new partner - solar giant NRG of Princeton. NRG will design, build, and operate an array of more than 11,000 solar panels and 14 micro wind turbines that, over the course of a year, will provide six times the power used during all Eagles home games at Lincoln Financial Field, the team said. This time, the Eagles are working with a major player, a company that has already done a similar project at the Redskins' stadium, in the suburbs of Washington.

Pennsylvania will start issuing rebate checks in July to help homeowners offset the cost of installing solar-powered energy systems, but don't expect an immediate stampede to plug into the sun. Even with a state rebate of up to 35 percent, on top of maximum federal tax credits of 30 percent, going solar requires a sizable investment. The typical four-kilowatt residential system costs about $35,000. In all but affluent households, that is an unthinkable expense, says David Blumenfeld - especially now, when "everybody is hurting, everybody is scared about losing their job. " So he is offering another pathway to the sun. By offering homeowners the option of leasing solar systems - a deal that would not involve the up-front costs typical of buying such equipment - Blumenfeld's new company, Urban Eco Electric, hopes to raise a bumper crop of solar panels across Philadelphia's rowhouse rooftops.

The Philadelphia Eagles' Lincoln Financial Field, built before the advent of seriously green construction, is soon to become the greenest stadium in the world, the club is to announce Thursday. Come opening day next September, if all goes as planned, the upper rim of the stadium will be studded with 100 spiral-shape wind turbines. Some 2,500 solar panels will cover portions of the roof and facade, tilting south. In the parking lot - not where the fans park - the Eagles will build a cogeneration power plant that can run on biodiesel or natural gas. Taken together, the Eagles say, the three sources will fully power any game, even as the stadium lights blaze, and the sound system blasts.

NEW YORK - U.S. solar developers are luring cash at record rates from investors ranging from Warren Buffett to Google and KKR by offering returns on projects four times those available for Treasury securities. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., together with the biggest Internet search company, private equity companies, and insurers MetLife Inc. and John Hancock Life Insurance Co., poured more than $500 million into renewable energy in the last year. That's the most ever for companies outside the club of banks and specialist lenders that traditionally back solar energy, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance data.

A year and a half after first announcing plans for solar power at the Eagles' stadium, the franchise announced Thursday that it had teamed up with a new partner - solar giant NRG of Princeton. NRG will design, build, and operate an array of more than 11,000 solar panels and 14 micro wind turbines that, over the course of a year, will provide six times the power used during all Eagles home games at Lincoln Financial Field, the team said. This time, the Eagles are working with a major player, a company that has already done a similar project at the Redskins' stadium, in the suburbs of Washington.

Camden County is preparing to borrow up to $49 million for a sprawling solar-power network that would be among the largest in New Jersey. The county plans to begin work in early 2012 installing rooftop and on-the-ground solar panels across its offices, libraries, and college campuses, totaling 7 megawatts of generating capacity, which would exceed that of some of the state's largest solar farms. The project comes as New Jersey continues to rank second in the nation (after California)

Saint-Gobain Corp. , the French conglomerate, in August joined its Valley Forge-based manufacturing-materials arm with its building-materials group, CertainTeed , under a single boss, newly promoted John Crowe . Sales of building materials have fallen with U.S. home construction. The company, with $7.3 billion in yearly sales in North America and 19,000 employees there, cut operations by 15 percent in 2007-09, closing small facilities such as its Malvern plastics plant.

TRENTON - Gov. Christie on Tuesday outlined a vision for New Jersey's energy future that focuses on nuclear, natural gas, and commercial solar power, and retreats from ambitious renewable energy goals. The governor introduced a long-awaited energy master plan at a news conference more than a year after his administration said it would revise the document developed under the previous administration to reflect the economic downturn. The release follows the governor's controversial announcement last week to pull New Jersey out of a multistate cap-and-trade agreement for greenhouse gas emissions, a key part of Gov. Jon S. Corzine's energy plan.

By Hal Marcovitz When I converted my Bucks County home to solar power in 2009, I was delighted to learn that utilities in Pennsylvania and elsewhere would pay me for the right to claim the energy produced on my roof as their own. Last year, I earned more than $1,600 selling what are known as alternative-energy credits. Pennsylvania and other states require utilities to generate a portion of their energy from renewable resources such as sun and wind. Since utilities in the Northeast generally don't maintain large solar or wind farms - as their counterparts in places like Arizona and New Mexico do - they satisfy the requirements by claiming ownership of power produced by rooftop systems.

Wednesday's warm and sunny weather was propitious for the new solar-powered traffic light at Woodbury-Glassboro Road in Mantua Township, at the entrances to a Target store and Timber Creek Shopping Center. "We are always looking for ways to use green energy, so we're happy to be the first to be doing this," Gloucester County Freeholder Heather Simmons said of the four-way signal, which is topped with six solar panels. It is the first of its kind in New Jersey, according to the state Department of Transportation.

The Pennsylvania solar-energy industry is collapsing under the weight of its own good fortune. Spurred by hundreds of millions of dollars in federal and state incentives, solar developers have built so many projects in recent years that they have created an oversupply of solar-energy credits, the market instruments that provide the developers with a critical income stream. The price of solar credits in the state has plummeted as much as 75 percent in the last year, dramatically shrinking the income-producing potential of new and existing solar projects.

NEW YORK - The city will phase out the use of polluting heavy oils to heat buildings and will begin building solar power plants on capped landfills, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday in his first update to a four-year-old environmental plan that aims to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions 30 percent by 2030. Under the plan, the phaseout of heavy oils from New York City's boilers would start right away and be completed by 2030. It would reduce the presence of airborne fine particulate matter, which the city says is killing 3,000 residents each year and forcing 6,000 to seek emergency asthma treatment.