The pressroom is a concrete building built in the late 1970's. The roof was old and flat. A traditional ballasted mounting system, with its added weight, wasn't an option-- the old roof would have collapsed. Mark Stahl the operations manager of Astralux Power needed a different kind of a solution.
Case Study: Silverback Solar & The Pressroom Denver. Colorado
Installer: Astralux Power Systems, Boulder, Colorado
Customer: The Pressroom Denver. Colorado
System Size: 10 KW
On a warm spring afternoon, The Pressroom owner, Ted Walker, leads a printing customer up, not to look at his state of the art Xerox digital press or thermal laser etching processor, but instead up through his roofhatch to his "observation deck". He is there to showcase his solar array, completed in early 2009 with the help of Silverback Solar and their installer Astralux.
Walker, who graduated from Colorado University with a degree in environmental biology with an idea to work in wildlife management, found himself for the past 27 years the owner of a medium-sized sheet- fed commercial printing company. Always committed to the environment, Parker saw that his biggest single bill for operating his business, electricity, could be alleviated by installing a solar electric power system. Federal incentives offered through Xcel Power could not only return 40% of the installation costs, but would make a 20 year commitment to buy any excess power Parker's system could produce.
"It's a good idea to be as green as possible but to also take advantage of the economic savings. It's simply smart business practices to do whatever I can to reduce costs by being green.", stated Parker.
The pressroom is a concrete building built in the late 1970's. The roof was old and flat. A traditional ballasted mounting system, with its added weight, wasn't an option-- the old roof would have collapsed. Mark Stahl the operations manager of Astralux Power needed a different kind of a solution.
"Having access to a pre-engineered solar racking system from Silverback made this job possible.
Silverback provided me with a complete set of structural calculations along with an AutoCAD layout. " The customer was also located in a very windy part of town with no big buildings to the west of him and springtime winds of 50 mph are commonplace. Placing a double height Sharp PV panel system was no problem for Silverback racking systems.
"They were able to achieve a 25 degree tilt for a 10K Sharp array. " continued Stahl.
"I believe in brands, like Sharp and Silverback, they are always better choices" said Parker. I go up on my roof and look over the mountains and see my investment immediately increased the value of my real estate and with just three years to pay it off, I will have 17 years of making money on the power I sell back to the electric company. You really can't afford not to do it.
The content & opinions in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of AltEnergyMag
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