WA/SA [waldrip architects/ s.a.] [architecture- los angeles]
Alberti, Sandro Sol; 22 March, 2002 [text10]
Sol
Working 9-5, at...
‘WA/SA’, ‘Aloha8’, and ‘Working 9 to 5, at...’
Although the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is currently issuing the most fantastic national incentive payments for consumers of solar power, these will not last forever (yes, LA pays you back for any excess wattage your 300w to 10kw photo-voltaic system may produce; one LADWP document lists an expiration date of 8-31-2005, and funds might run out; after December 2002 the current payment of $4.50/watt will be reduced by $1, and another 50 cents, to $2.50/watt, after December 2004; remember that you also get an additional LA Manufacturing Credit of $1.50 if your system is manufactured in LA; this will be reduced as well, to $1 after December 2003). So
are fictions of fen-om: [www.fen-om.com]
Surface panel
now is probably the best time, within the next decade, for jumping on the solar bandwagon (an average home in Southern California might save $15k in a decade; visit www.energy.ca.gov/cleanpower for a cost estimator). Various other incentives, grants, loans, and tax write-offs at: www.dcs.ncsu.edu/solar/dsire/dsire.html It was all there, the range of possibilities, exposed at the ‘Solar II Architectural Symposium’ (albeit in a hyper air-conditioned and over-illuminated auditorium that was not the most propitious for the theme). The pedagogical engineer, the political architect, the corporate architect, the solar architect, the foreign architect, and the socialist designer, all vied for attention, but it was the sun that ruled center-stage. Pedagogical-engineer showed us that there are many technical issues that can make or break a photo-voltaic (pv) design. For example, in certain panel layouts, entire rows (‘strings’) of modules have to receive sunlight in order to operate; orientation of such ‘strings’ is key, then, in vaults that curve west-to-east, where one side is shaded in the morning and the other in the afternoon; or in cases where an adjacent structure will shade part of a matrix. He also taught us about the fact that solar panels can still be relatively efficient (65%) if perfectly vertical. 7:12 tilt is optimal, and anything down to flat or up to 21:12 can be 85% efficient. Sometimes flat panels can be more efficient than angled ones, such as in the case of a ‘saw-tooth’ angled panel pattern, where only some 60% of the roof is
Siemens panel
