Ron Newdoll didn't install a PV system for aesthetic reasons. He did it for business reasons with ecological concerns taking a close second.
“It has word-of-mouth advertising.”
“It’s eco-friendly, a bodacious project.”
These were just a few of the comments by tenants describing the 386-kW photovoltaic solar system installed by businessman Ron Newdoll on the four Edison Technology Park buildings he owns adjacent to Menlo Park in northern California. A couple of tenants even likened the new high-tech look of the buildings to that of a Toyota Prius. “When you see a Prius on the road, it attracts attention because of the futuristic design,” just as the technology park buildings do, one tenant explains.
Newdoll decided it finally made good business sense to install what turned out to be a $3.5-million solar project. His investment will be paid off in less than 10 years and in the following 20 years, “we will recoup the remaining investment by making it an income source,” he says.
As Jim Waschura, one of the 30 owners renting offices in the technology park, observes, “This is another way for him to invest in property and increase his return on investment.” It is indeed a generational shift in how some in the business community view solar.
Waschura pointed out one quality the solar system brought to the building that only a businessman would notice. The modern, stylish “Prius” look of the buildings attracts employees. “It makes us proud of the buildings and their location. The green component and aesthetics makes the buildings attractive to work in,” he adds.
The cost of the photovoltaic system and associated energy monitoring system will be paid for in part by over $1.5 million in utility rebates, federal and state tax incentives, and accelerated tax depreciation. The solar system is expected to produce as much electricity annually as the business park buys from Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E).
Newdoll is an electrical engineer and is concerned about the environment and energy efficiency. He has been following the development of the solar industry for the past ten years and decided that its development in the past two years justified the major investment. He is also proud that the PV system will be responsible for removing almost 10 million pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over its 30-year lifetime by displacing electricity generated in fossil fuel plants
Newdoll’s goal was to zero out the buildings’ annual electrical bills. The system is net metered: When the solar system is producing more electricity than the buildings need, the extra power is pumped back into PG&E’s distribution lines. On a good crisp bright day during winter months, the system will produce almost as much as tenants use. “During summer months, we will be generating in excess,” he says. “Besides ecological sense, it makes smart business sense,” Newdoll adds.
The 30 businesses renting office space in the 85,000-square-foot business park range from high-tech electronics to software to patent attorneys and biotech companies. The four buildings were all built at different times. The first is a 15,000-square-foot metal building constructed in 1978. Two others, also 15,000 square feet each, were built in 1984 and 1986. The fourth, at 40,000 square feet, was built in 1989. The three newer buildings were built using the concrete tilt-up method, and have the best insulating qualities, Newdoll says.
Each tenant had its own electric meter and paid utility bills directly to PG&E except for the oldest building, which had one meter. Those tenants will be billed according to in-house meters, Newdoll says. However, for the solar system to be net metered, all the old meters had to be ripped out and replaced with one new meter in each building.
A Complex Design
The installation of the PV systems required some complicated design engineering by Quantum Energy Group, a subsidiary of WorldWater & Power Corp., according to its president and chief executive officer, Matthew Nelson. The bid by the Applegate, Calif.-based company in 2004 beat out four other bidders.
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| The team designed the structure for the photovoltaic cells to cantilever over the building. |
The design took four to six weeks but construction was spread out over six months. Energy audits based on the amount of electricity billed by PG&E determined the size of the solar systems. Over 2,300 solar modules manufactured by SCHOTT, the German technology group, and 17 inverters from seven different manufacturers were installed.
Nelson said he worked with the San Mateo County Building Department in Redwood City to obtain the appropriate permits, and found it and PG&E to be very helpful. “We were concerned about code enforcement, but the building department was one of the best we’ve worked with,” he says.
The oldest building didn’t have enough roof space to install the appropriately sized system, so Nelson and his team designed a structure to hold the photovoltaic panels as they cantilever over the front of the building to provide shading for a parking lot. The structure is 130 feet long by 30 feet wide, and does not rest on the building. The 35-kW system began operating in July 2005.
The solar systems on the three newer buildings extend over the front of the south-facing buildings, creating awnings. Building 2 holds a 77-kW system that began operating in September. Building 3 has a 100-kW system that began operating in December and the largest and newest building has a 181.5-kW system that began operating in late November.
“We ran small crews,” Nelson says. Systems were installed on one building at a time to keep the budget down and because of the technical complexity of the project.
Electrical Work Challenging
The electrical hookup added yet another level of complexity. Net metering would not have been possible had individual utility meters for each suite remained. So Nelson and his crew had to rip out 50 utility meters, install a new bidirectional utility meter in each building and install new switchgear. PG&E brought in new conductors. The crew dug underneath PG&E’s transformer pads to add conduit to existing transformers to tie into new multiple switchgear pads. The utility team worked side-by-side with Nelson’s crew. “It was amazing,” he says.
Another sign of the cooperation, according to a PG&E spokesman, was the effort put out by the utility’s generation interconnections services department. It made multiple calls to East Coast testing labs and certification bodies to obtain certification for the solar system’s state-of-the-art inverters. Without that certification, Quantum Energy would have likely struggled to find substitute inverters, causing delays in the installation.
Dennis Brown, one of the tenants and cofounder of Chemgenex Therapeutics, said installation of the solar system seemed relatively efficient. “We never had any disconnects going from one system to another,” he says.
In contrast, Waschura, president of Synthesys Research, says he had to bring in a generator for the one day on which power was down. His 50 employees manufacture electronic testing equipment for chip manufacturers and the telecommunications industry, and he could not shut down business for one day as other tenants did.
The business park is located at the edge of a residential area and Waschura explains there is a natural tension between the two usages. Not only does the attractiveness of the solar system ease that tension, but Newdoll had earlier attenuated it by being a good neighbor, Waschura says, keeping the trees trimmed and installing a park across the street. Newdoll was quick to put up baffling to quiet fans that cool the electric transformer systems following some complaints soon after the system was installed.
A New Kind of Metering
Yang Associates, in Sunnyvale, CA, designed and installed an intranet data distribution system it has branded Wattminder. Quadlogic Controls Corp. remote meters were installed in tenant offices to track electricity use. These are standard socket meters that are plugged into electric sockets. Low-cost sensors installed on lines track natural gas and water usage in each tenant suite.
Steve Yang of Yang Associates describes the Wattminder system the company designed and installed. The remote electrical meters tracking tenants’ electrical use and the sensors tracking gas and water usage transmit the data over a wired system to data acquisition modules linked by what Yang calls the “RS-485 Modbus protocol” and an intra-net local area network (LAN) in each building. Within milliseconds the information is sent via a wireless fidelity (WiFi) networking technology from each of the four buildings to a data base server and the associated Web site, also set up by Yang, so that all the information is accessible by tenants and Newdoll on their desktop computers.
Yang explained that the system can also track solar generation and can summarize kilowatts, gallons-per-minute of water and cubic feet-per-minute of gas used daily, monthly and yearly. Wattminder can also be used to spot and diagnose unusual spikes in consumption produced by water leaks, leaky toilets, or a malfunctioning gas heater, even problems in the solar array. A sudden degradation in the solar array’s performance will trigger an alert signal to an operator or technician by E-mail or text messaging.
Managing Energy Use
Newdoll had renegotiated the 30 tenant leases to include utility costs and is now billing them directly for their energy use at reduced rates while offering incentives to reduce consumption. He had averaged a year’s worth of PG&E bills for each tenant, and is billing them using that number, discounted between 5% and 10%. At the end of the year, the billed rate will be compared to actual usage. If the tenants reduce energy use, the bills will be reduced.
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| The owner decided it made good business sense to install what turned out to be a $3.5-million dolar project. |
The intent will be to keep the utility bills reasonably flat over the years, something that PG&E cannot do, Newdoll says. This was an important part of his plan, since he wants all tenants to be conscious of their energy usage. The only way to do that is for them to pay for what they are using, he said. Newdoll hopes his investment will encourage other business owners to do the same thing.
Newdoll’s message worked on tenant Dennis Brown, owner of Chemgenex Therapeutics. He and his partners hadn’t thought about energy efficiency, but Newdoll’s successful effort has everyone thinking more about it. “We’re more conscious of energy costs in our homes as well,” he adds.
On the other hand, Dr. Mark Saifer, a co-owner of Mountain View Pharmaceuticals Inc. reported that his company had already converted most of its fluorescent lighting from T12 to T8 lamps, reducing their energy use by 25%. Because of the nature of his business, Saifer’s company, which occupies two suites in 4,000 square feet, is one of the major energy consumers in the technology park. The work requires maintaining temperature controls so refrigeration is a heavy electrical load. “We are replacing a freezer with a more energy-efficient model,” he says. “We’re pretty good about keeping the sun out by closing blinds. The windows of one of the suites is shaded by one of the solar system awnings and this should have an impact on office cooling during the summer months, he adds.
Dan Scott, owner of Sports Potential, a startup business, has the last word: “As tenants we’re satisfied. We try to keep our costs low and cheap energy is consistent with our need to be prudent.”