I had the chance, recently, to tour the largest photovoltaic rooftop installation in Arizona. I jumped at the chance and climbed the ladder. The installation is on the roof of the Cowley Co. Warehouse at 27th Ave & Buckeye, not far from the AZ State Capital building.
Our guides were Tom Lepley of Phasor Energy Company Inc. and Karl Schmitt, General Manager of Empire Renewable Energy, LLC. Empire put the project together. Tom was the lead engineer.
The scale of this project takes your breath away. 7,872 crystalline silicon modules (solar panels) cover 28,000 square feet of rooftop. The array is held on the roof by its own weight and some ballast around the periphery. There is no racking attaching it to the roof itself. The wiring and conduit appear like leashes to hold it down but their only function is to take that harvest of solar energy down to the invertor room where it can be changed into useable AC power.
There are four inverter- transformer set-ups. On the left you can see one of two hard shutoff switches. The large item in the center is the invertor. The current enters on the left as DC, is inverted in the center two sections and leaves on the right as AC. Next it goes into the transformer (at the end). From there it is either used by the facility or sold back into the grid. We were in the invertor room as the sun was setting. Tom Lepley let us watch as the current dialed itself down 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 and off. At 12:30 pm, the guage would have shown a maximum flow of 500 KW.
I really can’t emphasize enough how massive this installation is. We stood on the roof for almost an hour just taking it in.
We were joined later by Brian Hansen, Senior Tax and Strategic Projects Manager for Empire Southwest. Brian explained the incentives, grants and tax credits that make these sorts of projects practical from an economic standpoint. If you want to know more about this or similar projects, check out their website for renewable energy solutions. Karl can be reached at Karl.Schmitt@empire-cat.com or 602-333-5638.
We at Solar Pool Technologies are huge supporters of the solar option. Solar-Breeze, the solar robotic pool skimmer, is our first offering and it is already helping hundreds of homeowners to save on their electric bills while doing the Green thing.
If you are interested in understanding more about how solar energy becomes electricity, read How Does a Solar Panel Work?
Pictured below: top - Tom Lepley in the invertor room, middle - Karl Schmitt at the top of the ladder, bottom - looking across the river of conduit with separates the solar array into two fields
