{"id":33425,"date":"2013-12-27T06:30:17","date_gmt":"2013-12-27T12:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=33425"},"modified":"2013-12-27T10:10:16","modified_gmt":"2013-12-27T16:10:16","slug":"how-one-austin-church-could-lead-to-more-urban-solar-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2013\/12\/27\/how-one-austin-church-could-lead-to-more-urban-solar-power\/","title":{"rendered":"How One Austin Church Could Lead to More Urban Solar Power"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_1048\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 199px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/11\/102957875.jpg\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1048\" alt=\"Solar Panel Array\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/11\/102957875-300x451.jpg\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/11\/102957875-300x451.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/11\/102957875-220x330.jpg 220w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/11\/102957875.jpg 395w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">AFP\/Getty Images<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\"> <\/p><\/div>\n<p>The promise of harnessing the power of the sun and turning it into renewable energy has attracted countless businesses, governments and environmental groups. But it might be a church here in Austin that ends up bringing one of the next breakthroughs in solar technology.<\/p>\n<p>To understand the scope of this project, it helps to know that Saint David\u2019s is no little roadside chapel. The Episcopal Church in downtown Austin fills up a whole city block. It provides your typical church services and then some.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have a coffee shop, we have a restaurant, we have a pre-school for children,\u201d says Terry Nathan, the parish administrator.\u00a0\u201cThe better part of our basement is dedicated to a homeless center.&#8221;\u00a0The Church keeps a staff of caterers for its side business hosting events, and has a bookstore and parking garage, which they make available for\u00a0commercial\u00a0use. All that takes a lot of electricity.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/126715960&amp;color=ff6600&amp;auto_play=false&amp;show_artwork=true\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>So about ten years ago, church members got the idea to put solar panels on the parking garage. But they didn\u2019t take the plunge until last year. That\u2019s when low interest rates, improved technology, and government rebates all came together.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe had a window of opportunity that actually let us create a rather significant solar project,\u201d says Nathan. And they were in Austin, probably one of the most progressive, solar-friendly cities in Texas.<\/p>\n<p>So Nathan felt a little shock when people at the city-owned electric utility told him the project was not allowed. \u201cI brought the Austin Energy people together and said \u2018What can we do?&#8217; And basically they said, \u2018Not much,'&#8221; remembers Nathan.<\/p>\n<p>The problem? The church&#8217;s proposal was too big, with solar production of around 150 kilowatts. In the end, church allies at City Hall convinced Austin Energy not to pull the plug. But that took some tricky engineering.<\/p>\n<p>It goes back to the way cities set up electric grids in downtown areas, says\u00a0Clayton Stice, a power engineer with Austin Energy in the system engineering group. Stice says downtown networks are often separated from the rest of the city, to ensure extra protection for densely-populated, commercially-important parts of town.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The issue this causes is that, for safety, the system is designed so that power can only flow to the customer,&#8221; Stice says. &#8220;So if there is any back-feeding power, the circuit trips and opens up and cuts off power to that facility.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Saint David\u2019s solar plan was so big that on days when there\u2019s plenty of sun, but not much need for AC, it could create more electricity than the church needs. That would send electricity back to the grid, where it would register as a malfunction. It could not only cut off power to the building, but over time damage equipment, putting the downtown network at risk.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Other cities have tried putting these larger solar systems in effect and those systems are all sized to be smaller than the annual minimum load,&#8221; Stice says. &#8220;This is unique in that\u2019s its much larger than the annual minimum load.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The fix was to create a system that will decrease the amount of electricity produced during those days when the panels make more energy than the church needs.<\/p>\n<p>Bennet Ford, an engineer on the project with contractor Meridian Solar, says it was the first time he\u2019s worked to reduce a project\u2019s capacity. \u201cYou never like to curtail a solar system that\u2019s free energy from the sun and it\u2019s not going to be used here on site,\u201d Ford says.<\/p>\n<p>But with these new controls in place, the project could move forward. On a recent day, Ford watched as cranes took positions at the church. He says if all goes well, the project can serve as an example not just for other buildings in downtown Austin, but in other cities.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We\u2019re trying to lead the way and show other utilities, we in partnership with Austin Energy, how this can be done,\u201d Ford says.<\/p>\n<p>Austin Energy says it is already getting calls from other cities. But the utility urges patience. It will take at least a couple years of monitoring Saint David\u2019s solar power installation before the city has a clear sense of how well the system works from a technical and economic standpoint.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The promise of harnessing the power of the sun and turning it into renewable energy has attracted countless businesses, governments and environmental groups. But it might be a church here in Austin that ends up bringing one of the next breakthroughs in solar technology. To understand the scope of this project, it helps to know [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57],"tags":[16,32],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33425"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33425"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33436,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33425\/revisions\/33436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}