For the most part business and industry, and the
people employed by them, work in daylight hours. Much of the “living”
people do is when the Sun is rising, setting, or gone over the horizon.
The Sun does its work when people do and sets when people relax. More
than concentrating efforts on building solar energy capacity for general
consumption, why not build more solar capacity that’s aimed at powering
industries whose work coincides with the hours that the Sun is in the
sky?
Large
photovoltaic arrays have been installed on office buildings,
supermarkets, warehouses, terminal buildings and big box stores for
years. Those installations have helped business owners reduce their
electric demands from the grid while supplying them, at least in part,
with clean electricity. Yet, outside of the solar cell and module
industry there are not as many stories of manufacturing firms adding
solar power to help power production processes.
Maybe
solar powered manufacturing will be the next wave of new solar
installations. If that happens Plastic Package, of Sacramento,
California, will be one of the pioneers. The company is now using solar
power to form virgin and recycled plastic into products. When complete
its 208 kilowatt solar system will handle all of Plastic Package’s peak
demand and assist its local power provider, Sacramento Municipal Utility
District (SMUD) in reducing its summer peak loads during the hottest
part of the day.
For the system, Plastic Package
chose cylindrical thin film solar panels from Solyndra. The cylindrical
solar modules capture light from all angles as the Sun arcs across the
sky. The modules also collect solar rays that bounce off the company’s
white roof to complete a 360 degree solar collection surface. The
cylindrical shape, with modules spaced apart, also aids in cooling the
panels with roof top breezes for better efficiency. The Solyndra solar
cylinders employ CIGS (copper indium gallium selenide) solar
photovoltaic technology.
The Plastic Package
system is the largest cylindrical thin film solar system west of New
Jersey and was installed by Premier Power Renewable Energy. Premier
Power is a provider of solar power systems for small to large
commercial, agricultural, utility, municipality and government
applications.
Going solar also adds an additional shade of greenness for Plastic Package, as does using recycled plastic.
“The
plastics business is not normally thought of as a green business”, said
Jim Kaye,Plastic Package Inc.’s Chairman, “but we are making major
strides in that direction by using recycled soda bottles as well as
bio-based materials in our products. Now that we’ve added solar, we want
to let the community and our clients know, so they can feel comfortable
that when they use our packaging, they are part of the sustainable
process”.
Solar energy systems installed on the
roofs of businesses that only operate 5 days a week could also be
supplying power to grid on weekends and holidays. Those two days of
power sold to the grid could help reduce system costs while being a new
source of clean power to be consumed by relaxing employees at home.
Plastic
Package specializes in the design and production of plastic containers
for food products, including chocolate confections, agricultural and
baked goods, as well as products for the medical, electronic and retail
industries.