The recent announcement that electric vehicles (EVs) will be allowed in HOV lanes seemed to provoke a number of negative comments from traditional car drivers. The obvious question is: why should EV drivers get a break?
Thompson Rivers University (TRU) will soon showcase a transformative new “solar roadway” technology, so new that it may be the first in Canada. A team of faculty, staff and students has learned that the Solar Compass project will receive funding of $36,000 from the TRU Sustainability Grant Fund and the project will now go ahead. The new technology involves thick glass plates that can be walked or driven on and have an embedded photovoltaic layer.
There has been a lot in the news recently about the need to address climate change and reduce our carbon emissions, in BC, in Canada and around the world.
For the third time running, BCSEA Okanagan entered into the Vernon Winter Fair Parade this year. With this year's theme being Mardi Gras, they turned heads with their floats of 8 electric vehicles and their costumes, decked out in beads, glitz and glam.
Novo Solar recently completed a solar installation in the centre of Gold Bridge, BC at the Community Centre and Library. With a large SW facing metal roof sloped at about 25 degrees off horizontal, to which a solar PV array could be secured, Novo Solar Systemswas contracted to design and install a grid connected, solar panel array. The Novo Solar Team first installed the FastRack systems to the roof. Then we attached 24 photovoltaic panels and wired them up to provide 6kW of power.
Our system was installed and turned on in test mode on June 11, 2015, and has beeen producing power since.
Reliability
As far as I can tell, the system has run without any interruptions except for a couple of hours when the electricians were on the roof installing the permanent fasteners. In the words any engineer likes to hear - 'It Just Works'.
Project is a joint venture that includes the city, landowner Teck and renewable energy non-profit
VANCOUVER — The builders of British Columbia’s first grid-scale solar
power plant in Kimberley named the project SunMine owing in part to its
location on a former mine site. But the operation is also finding more sun
to mine, exceeding initial expectations for electricity production.
The solar panels were lifted onto the roof by crane on May 28, and the mounting brackets, ballast, wires, wind deflectors, etc. lifted up through our roof hatch since then.
Connections and wiring are mostly done, and testing is underway as I write this, with one reading of 11,129 watts under bright sunshine at 1:30 PM June 11. It's wonderful to actually see it in place and running after these months of discussion, design and planning.
