Feb 5 2011
Philadelphia City has completed the construction of its first municipal-owned solar power facility. The city awarded the public-bid project to CETCO Contracting Services. The project was a ready-to-use design and build photovoltaic deployment for the Philadelphia Water Department.
CETCO offered a payment bond and full contract performance for the solar power project. Malcolm Pirnie offered original design procedures and interlinking locations. CETCO offered a ready-to-use PE stamped design of the photovoltaic system that comprised equipment purchase, geotechnical exploration and engineered structural design of the arrays, conclusion on location type of photovoltaic modules, inverter sizing, scheduling of wiring and conduit, electrical engineering of the system performance and interlinks and observing selection of the systems.
The solar power project is situated at the Southeast Water Pollution Control Plant of the Philadelphia Water Department and will be over this spring. CETCO will be offering a maintenance contract for two years with the project. The ground mounted PV system spans over an acre and will generate power, equaling the power demands of 28 families, for the treatment facility. The water department will own the solar renewable energy credits.
The solar power project is designed to produce or buy 20% of Philadelphia’s power consumption from renewable energy sources by 2015, an objective of Greenworks Philadelphia. The US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant for the Philadelphia City was funding $850,000 for the project. DOE’s Solar America Cities program was providing the technical assistance for the project.
Source: http://www.cetco.com