New Faculty Duplex Goes Solar!

The Chinquapin School held a flip-the-switch ceremony to dedicate the solar array installation for the LEED-Certified Duplex on Thursday, November 19, 2009. A tremendous thanks to Green Mountain Energy for their generous contribution. Additionally, Alternative Power Solutions donated two additional solar panels that we plan to use on our science building to generate power for one of our laptop carts–so, big thanks to them as well.

A 3.5 KW (before conversion) PV array was installed on November 2, 2009. The PV installation was generously donated by Green Mountain Energy Company and its Big Texas Sun Club and installed by Alternative Power Solutions. The array consists of twenty 175W Suntech solar panels equipped with Enphase micro-inverters.

APS installed the Envoy/Enlighten system that accompanies the Enphase micro-inverters that are on each solar panel. This system transmits information about each inverter to Enphase and they have a nifty piece of online software that allows you to monitor the solar array.

Click here to view the current energy production of the new solar array or check out our Duplex Blog.