Petra Solar turns cities into sun-power farms

Making clever use of parking lots, utility poles, and other spaces is one creative way to maximize renewable energy generation and minimize costs.

From Marketwatch:

Jersey City, N.J., may be an unlikely place to find a utility-scale solar farm, but Petra Solar has found a way to generate electricity from the sun even on hard-paved urban streets.

Bolted onto street-light and utility poles across Jersey City and other urban and suburban areas of the state, a five-foot by two-and-a-half-foot solar panel is attached about 15 feet above the ground, tilted south toward the sun.

Petra Solar

Petra Solar uses utility poles for hanging solar panels enhanced with smart grid technology.

Each new solar panel from the privately held South Plainfield, N.J., clean-energy technology firm generates about 225 watts of power, adding to generation capacity and helping utilities meet renewable-power requirements.

“It allows you to deploy quickly and cost effectively because you don’t have to invest in land, you’re not building substations or transformers,” said Petra Solar Chief Executive Shihab Kuran.

Under a contract with Public Service Enterprise Group Inc.  — New Jersey’s biggest utility — Petra Solar is now about halfway through its $200 million commitment to provide 40 megawatts of solar power in six cities and 300 rural and suburban communities in the utility’s service area. So far, it’s put up about 95,000 of the panels with a total generation capacity of 20 megawatts, enough power for 3,250 homes.

Petra Solar sells the panels to utilities, which are responsible for maintaining them during an expected life span of 25 years.

Petra Solar says it takes just 30 minutes to install one of its panels, which feeds its electricity directly into the utility’s power lines. Included in the gear are devices that hook up to an AT&T  communications network to allow utilities to remotely monitor their electricity lines.

The network gear helps old-school copper power wires behave more like an Internet-based information-technology system.

“The panels help create distributed energy, which takes stress away from central generation stations,” Kuran said. “When you generate power closer to the load, it’s more effective. Also, the smart-grid technology lets utilities have their eyes and ears open to what they’re delivering to their customers and that allows them to deliver the right amounts of power.” 

Kuran said he came up with the idea to use utility poles when he asked a prospective employee during a job interview to brainstorm about ways to apply solar technology.

“I was challenging the candidate to think outside the box in order to tackle the challenges we faced in New Jersey, where land is expensive...and the labor rate is high,” Kuran recalled in a phone interview with MarketWatch. “I looked outside my window and saw a pole. I said, ‘How about if we put (the solar panel) on the pole?’ ”

Panels draw complaints, praise

While the panel program continues to fan out across Public Service Electric and Gas Co.’s service area, the utility has drawn aesthetic complaints from some residents and municipal officials.

Robert Cotter, a director in the Division of City Planning for Jersey City, said municipal officials held a meeting with PSE&G to complain about Petra Solar panels upsetting the integrity of some historic blocks. Cotter said the city has no plans to mount any legal challenge because they would almost certainly lose.

“They agreed to remove five or six of them, but we’re stuck with them,” Cotter said. “Some folks do think they’re beautiful because they help create more sustainable power. I just don’t notice them any more.”