Ovonics in the News — Current

January 14, 2010

Making Music, Going Green

In the 50’s, Nebraska’s rural farming community depended on off-grid alternative energy for all their power needs until power lines reached the farmland and “everyone jumped onto the grid for ‘low-cost’ electricity and disposed of their wind generators,” recalls John Eriksen in an interview with Indian River Magazine. Some half a century later and with more than 20 years of specializing in custom home building, Eriksen has discovered “a product that would take him to the cutting edge of alternative energy.” The product – United Solar’s thin-film solar laminate – “bonds to roofing material and becomes an integral part of the building” and he recommends it to his clients, including his wife, Cindy Kessler, and owner of Stuart School of Music. “As soon as John showed me that our plan would work, I was on board,” Kessler explains. By turning the remodeling of her school into also a “green project,” she has been able to reduce energy costs.

“The Photovoltaic system at the school,” writes Indian River “produces 30-40 percent of the power used.” The solar panels can “offset their [Stuart School of Music’s] cost of electricity from Florida Power & Light” and, at the end of the year if there is a credit in their account, FPL will pay them for the overage.

Courtesy of Indian RiverMagazine.com
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January 12, 2010

Solar Power Landfill Wins Award

Impressed by “the use of thin-film, flexible” PV cells combined “with an exposed TPO membrane cap,” the Texas CEC panel of judges awarded the 2010 EEA Gold Medal for the environmental category to the solar energy cover of a landfill project. The solar cells, with 180,000 kWh total annual energy output, are bonded through the use of peel-and-stick process which ties them “directly into the existing landfill gas-to-energy system,” generating renewable energy electricity both in “low and high light conditions” and “at low and high temperatures.” In addition to their economic benefits – use of energy for onsite needs or sold – the thin-film solar panels deployed on the exposed cap help reduce CO2 emissions into the environment.

More information about the landfill project and The Engineering Excellence Awards Competition can be found at the link below.