As the world changes to become more technologically dependent, the need for power has risen to levels that the common sources of power cannot fully meet. This has led to use of alternative sources of power most of them being environmentally unfriendly. A technological campaign has been launched aiming at producing power by means which do not pollute the environment. This campaign has come to be known as green energy campaign which advocates for tapping of natural energy using appropriate technologies. One of these technologies is the use of solar cells to produce electric power for appliances. One of such projects is the solar energy project in flagstaff, Arizona (Thomas, paragraph 2).
The solar energy project in Flagstaff was commissioned by the commissioner of Arizona as a part of bringing renewable energy sources to the region. This project was commissioned in 2010, but in actual sense the region is the first to have a commercial solar power generating plant which began in 1997, as a means of cutting down reliance on other forms of power sources like coal-driven power sources which are not renewable. Assessing the extent of the success, it is clear that the goal of the commissioner to turn local energy sources from non- renewable to renewable is almost being achieved with over 70% of the people in Flagstaff cutting down their power bills by more than 60% due to use of solar energy for lighting and heating (Rebecca, paragraph 2).
Project details
The small power grid comprises of intelligent diagnostics in the distribution centers (substations). These intelligent diagnostics devices monitor the power usage by the clients and in case a certain line is down due to short circuiting it intelligently cuts the power supply only to the affected area not the whole grid. In short, the intelligent diagnostics help keep the whole system in proper working conditions. So as to have enough renewable energy tapped, the project has requested the state to allow it to install solar cells on most of the region’s rooftops. This aims at increasing the amount of solar energy tapped per unit time. This aims at meeting the ever increasing demand for solar energy (Rebecca, paragraph 5). To ensure equitable power supply to the customers, the project has a control center from where all the monitoring is done. The total power produced by the solar station is about 85kW and this feeds more than 45% of the local power grid in the region (Thomas, paragraph 4).
The other aim of the project is on utilization of environmentally clean thermal sources. To meet this demand, the project has come up with use of solar heaters which use insulation from the sun to heat the water. This aims at cutting down the costs incurred by use of electricity in warming up the water. On this aspect, the project has installed solar heaters on most roof tops for heating. The heated water is then used for domestic purposes like showers which in most cases require heating using electric boilers or other boilers which use fossil fuels (Thomas, paragraph 6).
The project planners aim at turning power supply from fossil fuels to renewable sources. This can be evidenced from the Arizona’s Public power supply which has worked hard to establish other renewable power stations in the region. In total, renewable power supplies produce about 5 MW of the total power used in the whole state (Thomas, paragraph 8).
In conclusion, the contemporary campaign of turning to the use of environmentally friendly sources of energy appears to have taken root in Arizona. This is due to exploitation of renewable sources of energy like wind and solar energy instead of relying in non-renewable sources which have great economic values making the total cost for power supply to be very high.
Works cited
Rebecca W. Arizona Corporation Commission: Commission approves APS solar pilot project in Flagstaff. Arizona Commission, 2010 intermediate release.
Thomas W. Theme Town: Geography of Landscape and Community in Flagstaff, Arizona. 2003 print retrieved from Backinprint.com
