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Berkeley students help Oakland housing project go solar
Hook up a community-minded building developer with a team of seriously solar students, and the result is a fortuitous mix of environmental consciousness and technical savvy, not to mention a break on taxes and the PG&E bill.
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Surveying progress on Coliseum Gardens construction are (left to right) MSE graduate student Ilan Gur, former Haas student Angela McGuire, Sun Light & Power’s Eric Nyman, MSE professor Eicke Weber, Sun Light & Power president Gary Gerber, and ME graduate student William Watts.
PEG SKORPINSKI PHOTO
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That’s what’s happening at Coliseum Gardens, a 16-acre affordable housing development now under construction in Oakland. For a class project last fall, four Berkeley students helped the builders do their homework on a solar power system for the new complex. Their comprehensive analysis of the solar industry, completed in 14 short weeks, helped project developers locate the vendor now designing rooftop panels for installation at Coliseum Gardens this spring.
“It was a great experience,” says team leader Angela McGuire, formerly a student at Haas School of Business and so inspired that she is now steering her own career toward solar. “I learned so much about renewable energy.” The project developers, New York–based Related Companies, also got a crash course in photovoltaics, the rapidly emerging field of rooftop solar cells that convert sunlight into usable energy.
Part of a massive revitalization effort started in 1995 near Oakland Coliseum, the $124-million project is a 350-unit affordable housing complex funded partially by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) HOPE VI program. Designed to revitalize blighted urban areas and failed public housing, HOPE VI emphasizes mixed-income housing, combined residential and commercial use, and access to public transportation.
“It’s not that we were looking for free work, but we really didn’t know enough about solar to do it ourselves,” says Related architect Steve Wraight. The company stumbled on the idea of contacting Berkeley after seeing an article about NE professor Daniel Kammen’s Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory. Serendipitously, Kammen was working on a new class, the first specialty course in solar to be offered at Berkeley, with MSE professor Eicke Weber.
The class was the brainchild of graduate student instructors Tonio Buonassisi of Applied Science and Technology and Ilan Gur (B.S.’02, M.S.’03 MSE), now a materials science Ph.D. candidate. Looking for a way to get students outside the classroom and involved in real-world projects, they sold Kammen and Weber on the idea of opening up the solar class to more than just a handful of grad students. The class, “Photovoltaic materials: modern technologies in the context of a growing renewable energy market,” was offered through the Management of Technology program and combined solar science content with market and policy considerations.
McGuire was one of 55 students from engineering and several other departments across campus who enrolled. She teamed up with William Watts (B.A.’05 Physics), now a graduate student in mechanical engineering, physics undergrad Damien Boesch, and visiting nanosciences student Mirjam Mueller to tackle the Coliseum Gardens project.
“These students wanted to sink their teeth into a real project,” says Wraight. At first, he admits, he thought it would be just an “educational exercise” but was impressed by the real impact the students had. And the students were impressed by Related’s commitment to standardize solar roof paneling systems for future affordable housing projects.
“This is a major real estate company that could replicate this system a thousand times,” says Watts. “We thought if we could show that solar is easy and saves money, we could help bring down the market price and eventually make solar affordable in every home.”
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Berkeley-based solar supplier Sun Light & Power will install panels like those shown here this spring to supply electrical power to parking lots, laundry facilities, and other common areas of the affordable housing complex.
PHOTO COURTESY SUN LIGHT & POWER |
Photovoltaics (PV), from photo for light and voltaic for voltage, is one of several renewable energy sources—including biofuels, geothermal, wind, and hydropower—that, unlike coal and petroleum, are infinite in their supply and don’t add carbon to the atmosphere. Researchers say PV’s potential is tremendous because the sun shines everywhere.
With growth worldwide of 25 percent annually for the last 10-plus years and over 50 percent in 2004 alone, the solar industry is hot. Proponents say it could solve energy problems in the U.S. by reducing dependence on imported fossil fuels and the environmental damage caused by burning them, as well as stimulating innovation and the economy. Research, like the work being done by Weber, Buonassisi, and others on a technique that would facilitate using lower-grade silicon in manufacturing solar cells (see Innovations), promises to reduce the cost of materials and boost industry growth even more rapidly.
Although the U.S. lags behind Japan and Europe in use of solar, California is the third largest market worldwide and has far more sunshine. Here, PV panels are cost-efficient even without the government subsidies and utility rebates that have been used as incentives since the 1980s, when the industry first got started.
“Every megawatt of solar capacity installed avoids more than 300 pounds of smog-forming pollution and more than 870,000 pounds of global warming pollution each year,” says Kammen, who retrofitted his 1937 Oakland home two years ago with a 2400-watt photovoltaic system. But costs are lower and efficiency greatly increased when solar is incorporated into new construction so that roof orientation, panel angle, shading, and other factors can be engineered to optimize sun exposure.
In addition to the Coliseum Gardens team, 10 other student groups inspired by the class worked on projects ranging from creating a solar wireless phone–powering device for use in developing countries to teaching solar concepts in the San Leandro School District. Even the faculty was inspired.
“This class was one of the most gratifying teaching experiences I have had at Berkeley,” says Weber, a member of the faculty since 1983. “Bringing in different disciplines is enormously helpful in teaching students how to network and work with people from different fields. Just like in industry, each team represented an interdisciplinary group in itself.”
The class was such a success that it will be offered again in fall 2006. By then, Coliseum Gardens will be fully occupied, and a fresh crop of solar-psyched students will be scouting the Bay Area for new places to make their mark. |
