LA Community College Going Off the Grid
by Jeff McIntire-Strasburg, St. Louis, MO on 10.18.06
This news appears to be so new that the Los Angeles Community College District hasn't even posted a press release at the time of this writing. According to a CBS affiliate in LA, though, the nine-campus district announced a major commitment to renewable energy generation at the Solar Power 2006 conference yesterday: each campus will have a big enough solar panel array "...to make the campuses self-sufficient and take them 'off the power grid":
"Here in sunny Southern California, we are meeting our responsibility to generate as much solar energy as possible, and continuing to maintain our leadership in pursuing sustainability practices in higher education," Larry Eisenberg, executive director of facilities planning and development for the community college district said. "We believe that what today may seem futuristic can soon be commonplace."While we've reported on numerous colleges and universities converting to renewable power through either on-site generation or "green tags" purchases, this may be the first time a higher education institution has planned to use clean energy as its sole source of power. LACC has just raised the bar... let's hope we see other campuses, and perhaps even other organizations, follow their lead. ::KCAL TVThe district plans to build enough solar energy cells to produce one megawatt of electricity at each of its colleges. One megawatt is enough to power 1,000 average California homes, according to the district. Each campus currently uses less than one megawatt of power.
District officials said they plan to eventually use excess electricity to convert water into oxygen and hydrogen, with the hydrogen being used at night to power campus fuel cells. The district also plans to build a renewable energy Central Plant and add "sustainability curriculum" at each campus.
This is amazing and so cool. LACC is not a haven for environmental concern and I want to congratulate the faculty and students responsible for this innovation on their campuses!
You go girl!
this is awesome, but would it really be more efficient to convert the excess energy to hydrogen and then back to electricity, instead of just storing the excess energy in batteries?
Why not just stay on the grid, and instead of wasting energy and materials on making batteries, just contribute to the grid during the day and use energy from it at night?
I agree with Ben. It would simple be easier and less impacting to just send excess electricity out during the day and get what is needed from the grid at night from a green utility. However, if they are incorporating the hydrogen storage system for educational reasons - such as driving home to students that it is possible to completely generate all one's own energy onsite - then I think the hydrogen system is a good idea.