As he unloaded tree after tree for City Park ’s latest venture on a perfect, crisp fall morning last week, all Tom Benge could do was marvel as he surveyed the transformed landscape around him. That section of the park, which had seemed neglected since Hurricane Katrina tore through, is being transformed into a multipurpose 50-acre swath called the Festival Grounds.

The site is designed to accommodate large music festivals, and when it’s not being used for events, will be open for walkers, joggers, picnics, soccer games, and people who want to wander through an urban swamp.

Soaring above everything will be all those trees -– about 300 in all -– including oaks, crape myrtles, magnolias and live oaks, which have been brought in to augment the towering oaks and cypresses that survived Katrina’s wind and the subsequent flooding.

The tract, just across the street from City Park’s massively popular Big Lake, is bounded by Wisner Boulevard, Friedrichs Avenue, Henry Thomas Drive and the railroad tracks running alongside Interstate 610. It will be dedicated Dec. 17 at 11 a.m.

The dominant man-made structure at the Festival Grounds, which used to be part of City Park’s South Golf Course, is a huge picnic shelter measuring nearly 4,000 square feet – larger than most people’s homes – and topped off with a hipped roof that soars to a height of 27 feet. The shelter has brick arches, a wooden ceiling and massive beams of blue steel.

Adorning the roof are 64 solar panels, which were put there with an eye toward thrift. The electricity they collect will power all of the pavilion’s 16 lights, as well as the adjoining rest rooms, said Tim Dakin, the project superintendent.

Leading a group through the site, Hopper passed what looked like a small power plant. It’s one of four that will provide electricity for festivals and music gatherings, including Voodoo Fest. Nearby are five freshly sodded sports fields, which are expected to be ready for use by spring, and a mile-long asphalt path. Workers were evening out the surface, using a blowtorch to make the asphalt easier to work with.

In a corner, abutting Christian Brothers School, is an exercise area featuring playground equipment, gear for adults and, under a blue canopy, heavy versions of gym-quality exercise machines, including a rowing machine and gear that lets users strengthen their biceps and perform squats with weights on their shoulders. The equipment was donated by Gertrude and Louis Feil and the Feil family.

“I think it’ll get a lot of use,” said Hopper, who performed a few squats.

His destination was the back of the park, where two acres have been set aside as a wetland.

A small body of water has been dug that is for more than simply reminding visitors that they are in south Louisiana. It’s part of the drainage system, Dakin said, explaining that water from the surrounding area will drain into this mini-lagoon and into the storm-drain system.

Trees are being planted in this section, and grasses are sprouting in the water. Newly planted palmettos were barely above the surface as Hopper walked past on a bridge.

Nothing is wasted. When lightning took out a live oak along Wisner a few months ago, three benches for the wetland area were created from the bigger branches, he said, adding, “To put a fancy metal bench out here would almost look out of place.”

That part of the site, like Festival Grounds in general, will need time to reach its potential, Dakin said, because the planting is still under way and because greenery just doesn’t thrive at this time of year.

“In April or May of next year, it’s going to be beautiful, vibrant and growing,” he said.

The park paid for the project with a $4 million federal disaster recovery grant. Torre Design Consortium Ltd. of New Orleans decided how the site should be used, and Cobalt Construction of Slidell was the contractor.

Source: nola.com

Source: nola.com

CONTACT
Jill Willie
Gallinghouse & Associates
Jill@Gallinghouse.com
cell: 504-432-6730

South Coast Solar CEO Tapped to Lead Energy Association
Tucker Crawford Named President of the Gulf States Renewable Energy Industries Association

New Orleans, LA—Tucker Crawford has stepped down as CEO of South Coast Solar in order to take a full-time position as President of one of the largest regional solar industry associations in the country.

While he has served as President of Gulf South Renewable Energy Industries Association (GSREIA) in a part-time capacity for the last two years, he will now devote 100% of his time to the association working to expand the use of solar power in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

Robert L. Suggs, Jr., is now the CEO of South Coast Solar, LLC, with Scott Oman serving as COO. Crawford will remain an owner and director of the company.

Make It Right Solar’s Director of Operations Pierre Moses credited South Coast’s leadership—Crawford, Suggs and Oman—in creating a thriving solar economy in Louisiana. “Robert has the experience and entrepreneurial drive to sustain the company’s growth and create new opportunities moving forward,” he said.

A long-time advocate of renewable energy, Crawford worked directly with the Louisiana Department of Revenue to craft rules regarding solar tax legislation. He intends to adopt the same forward thinking that has made Louisiana a successful solar power model in Mississippi and Alabama.

“Louisiana has already demonstrated how successful the solar energy industry can be by creating thousands of direct and indirect jobs and saving homeowners millions of dollars in utility bills,” Crawford said.

ABOUT SOUTH COAST SOLAR: Headquartered in the New Orleans metropolitan area, South Coast Solar, LLC, is one of the region’s first and largest solar energy contractors conducting operations in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, Tennessee and overseas.

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A new outdoor exhibit at Lynn Meadows Discovery Center in Gulfport is a creative way to teach children about clean energy. The exhibit features a solar power system built in the shape of two sunflowers.

The solar panels convert sun energy into electricity. The exhibit not only demonstrates energy efficiency examples, it can also help the museum cut down on energy costs every month.

Source: WLOX

In many ways solar power and battery backup represent a reliable form of protection against the unforeseen power outage. A battery backup system operates in much the same way as an uninterrupted power supply for your home computer. The electrical equipment and appliances on your backup won’t even flicker. You wouldn’t even have to reset your alarm clock. This instantaneous switching means that for some equipment, battery backup can be superior to a generator based system, which must start and warm up before switching on. Even with the best natural gas generator, you would still be in the dark for a short time if an outage occurred.

Sounds great right? There are drawbacks, however. Battery banks are expensive and they can only store a finite amount of energy. This means that in order to power large loads, such as air conditioning and older, non-energy efficient lighting and appliances, you will be making a significant investment in batteries. Your batteries will sit in their special enclosures topped off and ready for the lights to go out. After 7-10 years, even if they are never used, even the best batteries will need to be replaced. Hopefully, there will be a “magic bullet” storage technology that comes along to present an affordable replacement option, but if not, you will be making another investment in batteries, which could be $2-3000 for a basic system and much higher for whole house systems. This could be a bitter pill to swallow if no major outage occurred during that time frame.

The trick to making battery backup systems work starts with planning. Where will you put the equipment? An interior space in a garage is usually best and if it’s near your existing electrical panel, that’s even better because you may need to reroute some circuits. Think about the things that you really need to energize during an emergency and how long you want to use them each day. Next, think about how many days you want to have these items powered up even if it was raining outside and you aren’t getting much recharge from your solar panels. The more accurate you are with this process, the more satisfied you will be with your system because you will be less likely to experience your batteries going dead prematurely.

Now you can expect to get some recharge from your solar panels even on cloudy days, but if your batteries get into a state of deep discharge, you could find yourself in a situation where you can no longer meet the demands placed on the system by your loads AND recharge the battery bank to 100%. At this point, your only choice would be to hope the power comes back on, reduce the “load” on the system by turning things off, or introduce another charging source. A secondary charging source can be an attractive option and can increase the performance of your system while reducing its overall cost.

This option is called a “Hybrid System” and usually involves the integration of some sort of generator. Having a generator as part of your backup system may allow you to reduce the overall size of the battery bank and solar array while actually increasing reliability. With a hybrid system, when your batteries get low you can simply start the generator and run it until the batteries charge. Some systems and generators can even make this process automatic. There are several key benefits to this configuration. The obvious benefit is that since you have multiple sources, you have more latitude over what you can power during an outage. Suddenly, that window unit you are thinking about becomes possible. Secondly, you may be able to purchase a smaller generator than you otherwise would have installed because the battery system will be able to provide supplemental power to supply the surge current needed to start certain motors. Additionally, you will able to operate your generator at or near full load conditions which will make the most of your available fuel since a generator uses virtually the same amount of fuel whether it is powering loads at capacity or simply running full speed just to charge your cell phone.

So, what are your next steps? First, make up your “wish list” of the necessities you can’t live without during an emergency. Next, make sure you do everything you can to upgrade these items to the most efficient ones possible. It makes no sense to spend thousands extra on batteries to power a 15 year old refrigerator when you could invest in a modern unit that is 10 times more efficient, and you can enjoy the new one every day!

Once you have an idea of how you want the system to perform and what you wish to energize, it will be relatively easy for your solar energy consultant to quote a system for you. Without a solid foundation to design from, however, the size and cost of the system is anyone’s guess and you run the risk of your system being too small, which means you run the risk of the system not performing, or too large, which means you spent more than you needed to.

At the federal level, the U.S. Department of the Interior’s National Park Service (NPS) is responsible for preservation programs and activities, and administers the National Register of Historic Places. State historic preservation offices provide resources to communities at the state level.

Once a property is listed with the National Register of Historic Places, it becomes eligible for certain tax credits and grants. If a property owner does not adhere to specific rules, the status and incentives could be lost.

“The main theme that I’ve gathered – in talking with Boston and other older towns with historic districts – is that you’re looking for minimal visibility,” Crawford says.

A building owner’s best bet is to work with a solar installer who is well versed in historic guidelines, which vary by region. In general, installations are acceptable if they cannot be seen from the street, according to Tony Clifford, CEO of Washington, D.C.-based Standard Solar.

Clifford lives in Washington’s Dupont Circle historic district and has experience installing solar on his own house.

“My house, for example, is a row house built in the 1880s, so it has a flat roof and it’s three stories up,” he explains. “We had to go through the historic district.”

Clifford estimates that his company has installed solar arrays on up to 50 houses in historic districts in Maryland and Virginia.

“We really haven’t seen much of a problem,” he notes. “You have to know what the rules are, and you have to get the permit in advance. You might upset a lot of people if you went out, did the installation and said, ‘Oh, by the way, I did this.’”

Clifford says that because he lives in a historic district, he understands the importance of preservation.

“Solar is good for the environment, and I think that historic districts should retain their historic look to the maximum extent possible,” he says, adding that Standard Solar has never had to abandon a project because of the location’s historical significance.

The rise in solar energy installations is relatively new – especially in Louisiana, where incentives were implemented in 2008. As a result, many are still grappling with the guidelines.

“Because it was a new industry in our region, no one really knew what to do about it,” Crawford explains. “We worked with the National Park Service…and the Historic District and Landmarks Commission – which is the city of New Orleans’ local agency – and we helped establish guidelines.”

Crawford and Clifford do not believe that solar guidelines for historic districts are too onerous for installers. A typical New Orleans house, for example, has a required setback distance of about 10 feet from the front of the home’s wall line to where a panel can be installed.

“We’ve never been denied [an installation] on any major historic property unless it’s the absolute most historic of our buildings,” Crawford says, adding that a color-coded system that shows the historical significance of a building informs developers of which entities are most likely off-limits.

“We just know not to go after those, and there are only a few of them,” he says. “But for everything else, if we conform to that setback and it’s mostly not visible, they just rubber-stamp it.”

Guidance
The National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) is a nonprofit organization that works to save historic places in the U.S.

“The National Trust has talked about doing everything we can to integrate solar panels in historic districts on historic properties in as sensitive a way as possible, because we recognize that solar can be a very crucial way of helping people reduce their carbon emissions,” says Patrice Frey, the organization’s director of sustainability.

On its website, the NTHP lists suggestions for people who want to install solar panels on historic buildings. The organization encourages cooperation among all parties involved in order to advance solar development while preserving the integrity of notable structures.

The NTHP’s recommendations include the following:

• Ground-mounted solar panel arrays should be installed in inconspicuous locations, if possible;
• If a new structure is being built near a historic site, solar panels should be included on the newer building;
• Solar panels should be placed in areas that are least visible to the public;
• Installations that would alter the characteristic features of a historic structure should be avoided;
• Panels should not be visible above the roofline; and
• Panels should be set back from the edge of flat-roof buildings.

In April 2011, the NPS released the “Illustrated Guidelines on Sustainability for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings.” The guidelines focus mostly on energy efficiency and building retrofits, but they also include recommendations for solar installations.

In addition, in September 2011, the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), in conjunction with the NTHP, published “Implementing Solar PV Projects on Historic Buildings and in Historic Districts,” which reiterated the NTHP’s recommendations.

NREL’s document cites building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) installations as a possible alternative to traditional solar panels.

“It looks just like a shingle, so then you can have something visible from the street,” Clifford says. “But the challenge of that material, so far, has been that they’re not much in terms of power output – the efficiency is very low.”

If a BIPV system is being installed on an existing roof, it has to be retrofitted, which increases the cost of the project, Crawford notes.

However, “It’s a very good idea,” he says. “They’re very aesthetic, and they look fairly similar to a shingle. The downside is that they’re very expensive, and they’re very expensive to install.”

Regardless of the technology, the most important step solar installers can take when working on historic structures is to be prepared.

“Do your research, and check with the National Park Service and their guidelines,” says Crawford. “If your municipality doesn’t have solar guidelines, help them write some.”

Source: SolarIndustryMag.com

As part of the filing, Entergy asked the council for permission to reduce the formula rate plan credit that its electric and gas customers receive, part of a line item included on each month’s bill, and use that money to boost its storm reserve.

On an individual basis, electric customers using 1,000 kilowatt hours of power would see their bills increase starting in October by about $2.51 per month, according to the proposal. Gas customers using 50 ccf of gas per month would see their bills go up by $1.06.

Entergy contends that having customers pay more is necessary to speed up the pace of funding its storm reserve, which is used to help Entergy restore power after major storms and to reduce the volatility in rates that might otherwise result from storm restoration costs. The council has set a 2017 target for the fund to reach a $75 million.

Entergy dipped into the reserve to help restore damage after hurricanes Gustav and Ike in 2008 and tropical storm Lee in 2011.

Entergy New Orleans, which provides electricity to about 160,000 customers on the east bank of Orleans Parish and natural gas to about 100,000 customers on both sides of the river, has credited electric customers about 10.1 percent on their monthly bill, and natural gas customers about 3.6 percent, as part of a line item titled “Formula Rate Plan.” Under the proposed adjustment, electric customers would see a credit of approximately 8.4 percent while gas customers would see a credit of approximately 1.3 percent.

The filing, still subject to the City Council’s approval, marks a change from the past four years, during which the utility lowered its electricity rates, following an $18 million drop in 2010, a $35 million cut in 2009, and a $10.6 million reduction in 2008. In 2010, Entergy New Orleans kept gas rates unchanged.

“We think it’s a modest increase, and it’ll help us continue to provide safe and reliable service,” said Gary Huntley, vice president of regulatory and government affairs.

The storm reserve had about $14 million in April, Huntley said.

City councilors will have until mid-August to review the filing. A back-and-forth discussion between both sides will likely follow, and then Entergy and the council will have 25 days to settle any disputed items before the filing needs to be resolved and the rates go into effect.

Source: Nola.com

Leaders from the New Orleans business community will provide feedback to the Obama administration on ways the parties can work together to support economic competitiveness, job creation and innovation, according to Business Forward.

The delegation will get a chance to ask questions and brief administration officials on access to capital, workforce development, health care and immigration overhauls, the future of clean energy policy, infrastructure improvement, housing and neighborhood stabilization programs, environmental efforts and regulatory concerns.

Other local companies sending representatives are Theodent, The Transportation Revolution, RF Development and HGI.

Source: Nola.com

More energy from the sun hits Earth in one hour than all the energy consumed on our planet in an entire year.

In those terms, it is absurd that our federal government spends tens of billions of dollars annually subsidizing the oil industry, which pulls diminishing resources from underground, while the industry focused above ground on wind, solar and other renewable energies is derided in Washington.

Federal support for development of new energy sources is lower today than at any other point in U.S. history, and our government is forcing the ­clean-energy sector into a competitive disadvantage. To bring true competition to the energy market, ensure our national security and create jobs here rather than in China or elsewhere, we must level the playing field for renewable energies. In this presidential primary, Americans need to hear where the candidates stand on this critical issue.

Don’t get me wrong — we should not demonize fossil fuels. For more than 200 years, the United States has rightly invested in developing new sources of energy. From the land grants for timber and coal in the 1800s to the tax expenditures for oil and gas in the early 20th century to the investment in developing nuclear energy, support for energy innovation has always helped drive America’s growth.

Renewable energies, however, have not been treated the same way. When the oil, gas and nuclear industries were forming, federal support for those energies totaled as much as 1 percent of federal spending. Subsidies available to the renewables industry today are just one-tenth of 1 percent.

If our goal is to encourage competition in the energy marketplace, then the conversation in Congress shouldn’t be about attacking green energy or cutting all oil subsidies. The conversation should be about leveling the playing field so that renewables are bound by the same rules as fossil fuels. We must make it a national priority to clear the red tape and bureaucracy that puts renewables at a disadvantage. If the candidates running for president believe in energy independence as a matter of national security — regardless of whether they agree with the science behind climate change — then the issue of investing in renewable energies must be front and center in the campaign.

Instead of a simplistic and misleading one-word argument against green energy — Solyndra! — I’d like to hear from the candidates that government shouldn’t pick winners, as it clearly has with our lopsided subsidies. Instead of talking about one terrible green investment or, for that matter, any of the investments in fossil fuels that have cost billions, I’d like to hear them talk about how to make sure we properly vet all our investments to get a good return for the American people.

Federal investment is critical to the success of the renewable energy industry. That’s not a new idea. The same was true for coal, which would not have been economically feasible without tax exemptions and incentives. It was also true for offshore oil drilling, which was deemed unprofitable without royalty waivers and favorable packaging of federal leases.

Imagine what the renewables industry would look like if the federal government leveled the playing field and showed the same dedication we have in California. Our green sector is the brightest spot in California’s economy, having grown 10 times faster than any other business sector since 2005. Today, one in every four jobs in the U.S. solar industry is in California. One-third of U.S. clean-tech venture capital flows into our state. Nurturing the green-tech sector was the right thing for me to do as governor, and it is the right thing for the federal government to do.

I know from experience that it is frustrating for states to wait for the federal government to take action. Around the world, countries await treaties and international consensus. The United Nations convention on climate change is taking place in Durban, South Africa. The U.N. leadership on this subject has been great, but I don’t think we should just wait around. That’s why I am focusing on sub-national work; states, provinces and regions have shown that the time for action is now.

What our nation needs — for our economy, our national security and our environment — is more than a treaty signed by dignitaries. We need a level field on which the United States allows renewable energies to develop by the same rules as oil. If we can get there, the bountiful clean energy above our planet’s surface will compete well with the oil beneath it.

Source: The Washington Post