PARKING POWER: SOLAR CARPORTS.

Byline: Diane Dietz The Register-Guard

The solar energy explosion under way on business rooftops in Eugene is spilling out onto parking lots as firms erect free-standing solar carports to shield their employees and customers and give their companies extra electrical power.

Driven by generous incentives and tax credits, five solar carport projects sprang up in Eugene during the past few years. A medical office, an urban business parking lot, a health care provider and a gas station all have erected solar carports at their businesses.

The carports consist of photovoltaic arrays on slanted, rectangular roofs set on standard steel pillars. From six to 10 cars park between painted lines under each cover.

In California, banks of these free-standing solar carports cover open-air parking lots. They save energy by keeping cars cool - they need less air conditioning at midday to be bearable - and they generate energy to feed to the grid, or for other nearby purposes.

Parking lots are seen as "great potential real estate for solar," said Rob Del Mar, renewable energy project coordinator for the Oregon Department of Energy. "We will see more and more covered (solar cell) parking."

From Southern California to the Hudson Valley of New York, energy analysts are counting parking lots, totaling the acreage and estimated power that could be generated if all were covered by carports bearing photovoltaic systems. By some estimates, the country has 4.7 billion acres of parking lots - an embarrassment of asphalt riches.

Unlike the desert, where some visionaries plan vast arrays of solar cells, parking lots have the advantage of being next to a building that uses electricity or a transformer that can tie the juice it produces into the grid. "You're talking hundreds of feet - and not miles - for your interconnection," Del Mar said.

One other advantage: The lot-built systems won't be in the way.

"If your roof is covered with solar cells, what are you going to do when it comes time to change your roof?" said Bill Welch, engineering supervisor for EWEB's energy management program.

Eugene businessman Heinz Selig spent $240,000 this winter to put a six-vehicle carport on his property at 16th Avenue and Willamette Street, the site of Evergreen Nutrition and other businesses.

But the financial bite will actually be less than that in the end.

Oregon offers a 50 percent tax credit for systems, the federal government offers a 30 percent credit - and Selig signed a contract with EWEB to buy all the power his carport generates at a premium, which is 15 cents per kilowatt.

Selig is a bit of an evangelist when it comes to solar power. He has sent as many as 15 colleagues to Advanced Energy Systems to evaluate launching similar projects.

"If you owe taxes for the federal and state, it's a no brainer," Selig said. "I don't know why everybody is not doing it."

The Tamarack Wellness Center on Donald Street in south Eugene installed a solar carport over its 10-space employee parking lot two years ago. In the next seven years, Tamarack will have met the conditions of the incentives used to build the system and then the energy it generates will be free for the center's use. The solar cells should last an additional 10 to 15 years, site manager Dave Mischak said.

"There's not a lot of maintenance to this," he said. "You basically rinse down the panels and make sure there's not dust on them."

Dr. Kraig Jacobson, who installed a solar carport at the Oak Street Medical building,

said the firm chose to put an array of cells on the carport because it allowed a bigger system than if the installershad used the medical building's roof.

The $156,000 system supplies 15 to 20 percent of the building's electrical demands. The peak output is during the day, which is valuable because that's also the period of peak demand on the grid.

Installing the solar energy system means that EWEB will have to rely less on coal-fired power plants to meet peak energy demands, Jacobson said.

He said it's satisfying to watch the four meters, which indicate carbon dioxide equivalents, or offsets, produced by the cells.

At least every other week a college class, a Boy Scout troop or a curious engineer stops by to examine and to learn about the carbon-sparing system, he said.

The most public of all the solar carports in Eugene is the one over the pumps at Se-Quential Biofuels.

It features an innovative racking system designed by the Eugene-based Energy Design company, which allows the photo voltaic cells themselves to form the roof of the structure. On some other carport systems, the cells are mounted on top of a roof.

That PV carport costs $10 per square foot, or about $170,000 for the usual size, and Energy Design's model has the advantage of some transparency between cells.

"Sunlight filters through and illuminates the area underneath," Vice President Eric Morrison said.

The company is building a 4,000-square-foot solar parking structure for a nursery in Cornelius.

Parking lots are "a perfect unused space with lots and lots of sun. We have so much potential here to create solar power for our communities," Morrison said.

Most recently, a Eugene developer has included plans for a solar carport in a proposed Spaghetti Heaven restaurant project slated for the Whiteaker neighborhood.

Today's solar carport owners said they have built their projects against a day when plug-in hybrid cars come on the market.

Then, drivers can juice up during the day by plugging into the solar-electricity--generating carports. "It's a nice kind of symbiosis that can be immediately recognized," Del Mar said.

The plug-ins increase the hybrids' efficiency, allowing the cars to get 100 miles per gallon, instead of the current 45 miles per gallon.

In a major step this week, the Massachusetts-based A123 company announced that it would begin selling conversion kits to allow Prius hybrids to plug into the electrical grid - although Toyota quickly announced that making the conversion may void thewarranty.

General Motors, meanwhile, is racing to be the first to get a plug-in hybrid to market with its Saturn Vue soon and its Chevy Volt by 2010. Toyota also said its Prius with plug-in capabilities will be ready for corporate buyers in 2010 and for consumers a couple years thereafter.

Heinz will be ready. His carport was wired in advance for plug-ins. He expects fully electric cars to be common within five years.

"This is a good thing," he said. "I think everybody should do it."