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Solar Flairs Improve Infrastructure Aesthetics Project Designed to Generate Interest in Renewable Energy
November, 2008
By William Stodalka
Solar cells designed to resemble sunflowers have bloomed in Mississauga. However, their primary function is not to generate power, but to generate interest in green issues and enhance the landscape where they are placed.
"We could have just gone out into the grass and put out a pile of grids," observes Steven Hall, Director of Facilities Management for Peel Region. "That just doesn't have the same impact as all these poles with cells that resemble a sunflower's petals - even the metal disc in the centre resembles the middle of a sunflower."
The $300,000 solar power project is a relatively minor component of the Region's total energy and sustainability program. Hall envisions the flairs as an attraction that will complement a planned sustainability park across the street and serve a public education purpose.
In creating this project, Richard Schafer, an Energy Project Specialist for Peel Region, saw a way to use solar cells to beautify the site - at the Clarkson Wastewater Treatment Facility - that was largely unusable for anything else. He made sure the solar cells fit into the landscape, even taking into account how well they fit in with the surrounding trees.
Each petal of the sunflower-shaped configuration converts sunlight directly into electrical energy by absorbing a part of the sunlight's energy into silicon crystalline. This energy knocks loose electrons, thus starting an electrical current. Metal contacts at the ends of the cell draw off this current. However, this process produces DC electrical energy, and a special converter is needed to make it into standard AC energy.
Shafer chose the design after seeing photos of similar sunflower panels built on actor Robin Williams' farm, which were developed by MCW Custom Energy Solutions. Mississauga's solar flairs are now the largest example of this design in North America.
The flairs currently produce 12.7 kilowatts at a cost well above the 4 to 6 cents per kilowatt-hour typical cost of electricity. They supplement the power supply for the wastewater treatment plant, but provide only about 0.5% of its 3-Megawatt baseload energy needs.
The flairs will eventually help power the planned Clarkson Community Recycling Centre, opening in 2009. Even then, they will have a payback horizon of around 20 years, although the projected period could vary depending on the future costs of electricity and maintenance.
The Enersource Corporation, Mississauga's electric and hydro utility, provided half the $150,000 capital costs of the project from a fund the Ontario Energy Board stipulates all local distribution companies must use for conservation and demand management programs. Peel Region contributed the remaining share of the funding.
William Stodalka is a freelance journalist based in Toronto.
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