SPG Incorporates Solar Panels to Mammel Life
At The Marine Mammal Center (TMMC) in Sausalito, California, where sea otters, dolphins, seals and even whales that have been abandoned or abused come for healing, SPG Solar has installed a solar panel system that both shades open enclosure areas for greater comfort and healing and provides 10 percent of the facility's needed electricity.
Measured at peak capacity, the photovoltaic (PV) array will deliver 37,000 kilowatt hours annually from a 22.5 kWp system. The kWp designates kilowatts at peak (p) performance, or output.
Working with the TMMC staff, SPG Solar - which designs and installs custom PV systems - created a uniquely suitable marine mammal shelter by analyzing the pitch of individual PV panels in relation to the slopes where they were installed to provide optimum shade. SPG also used materials designed for stability and maximum performance in the damp, salty environment where the mammals take shelter, and insured the animal's safety by concealing the wiring inside the PV panel's columnar supports.
As a final touch, SPG installed an interactive kiosk which allows the approximately 100,000 annual visitors from around the world to see how the system is performing in real time.
TMMC, which rescues and rehabilitates up to 1,200 marine mammals each year with a full-time staff of 30, went solar in order to set an example for other organizations, according to Tony Promessi, TMMC's director of Life Support and Facilities. Because TMMC is an educational facility, as well as a marine hospital, it seemed the ideal way to promote clean, renewable solar energy, Promessi noted.
According to figures from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, TMMC's solar installation will cut emissions of carbon dioxide - which would have been produced by a fossil-fuel burning power plant - by 664 metric tons over the next 25 years, which is the lifetime of the system. This is equivalent to taking 122 cars off the road or planting 4,000 trees.
Carbon dioxide, implicated not only in global warming but in the rising acidity of oceans, is destroying phytoplankton. Phytoplankton, the ocean's equivalent of trees, shrubs and grasslands, drive the entire ocean food chain. Without them, ocean fish will disappear, leaving marine mammals without their staple food, so the TMMC solar installation is also another facet of marine mammal rescue, insuring that the oceans remain viable food sources not only for seal and dolphins but for humans.
SPG, which recently completed the largest PV theater installation in the U.S. on the roof of Livermore Cinemas in California, also partnered in February with SunRun, which leases solar systems to homeowners at rates that are usually less than the utility charges.
(ArticlesBase SC #1235639)
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