Cabrillo Warms Up To Solar Power
Posted: Monday, Aug 27th, 2007
BY: David Carkhuff of the Register Pajaronian
APTOS — Roger Denault foresees the day when solar panels dot the Aptos campus of Cabrillo College. The solar-power complex would represent the largest solar installation in Santa Cruz County, he said.
Earlier this month, after Denault visited with the governing board of Cabrillo College about the $2.2 million project, he was optimistic. It was a matter of keeping the plans on track so Denault’s Solar Technologies, the prospective installer, and Generating Assets, the investor, could secure a $2.2 million rebate through Pacific Gas & Electric.
“It looks like it’s going to be happening, there doesn’t seem to be anybody who’s against it,” Denault said.
Solar Technologies hopes to install more than 6,500 solar panels on the campus. The college supports this idea.
“Ecologically, the project would offset about 66,000 tons of carbon dioxide over its warranted lifetime,” Denault said. “In terms of the equivalent acres of trees it would take to make that action happen, it’s 334 acres of trees in the space of about 4 acres on Cabrillo.”
Other than the delays resulting from the normal operations of a college, where key faculty members were off for the summer, few obstacles have emerged, although location to place the panels has been a concern.
“We’re sort of agnostic on that,” Denault said. “We think it’s probably the campus community’s business to figure out where it goes.”
The roofs of southwest-facing buildings and a back hillside below the campus horticulture center both were candidate locations, but now the parties are looking at building covered parking canopies for mounting the arrays, he said.
“That seems to be where we’re at right now, a combination of places,” Denault said.
“The goal is to do two things,” said Doug Deaver, director of facilites planning, purchasing and contracts with Cabrillo College since 1999. “We want to be a good citizen in the community and use green energy as much as possible for the environment. … And the second thing we would like to do is it would give us a hedge against future energy prices. We basically go through the state of California where we buy natural gas … at least a portion of your energy bill is locked in, for planning purposes at least a part of it is locked in. This would allow us to know and lock in 15 and 20 percent of our energy bill.”
Generating Assets, which is equipping Soquel High School with solar power, and local company Solar Technologies took the initiative to get the rebate on behalf of the...
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