The sun is the most abundant form of renewable energy on Earth. Solar energy already provides more than 1/3 of all electricity in the United States, and in some countries, entire electrical grids are powered by solar panels. As architects and engineers, you can build on this momentum by incorporating solar design principles into your buildings and infrastructure. Fueled by the renewable energy revolution, this is an exciting time for solar. Advances in photovoltaic (PV) technology, innovative financing options, and power purchase agreements are encouraging creative solar energy development on a scale not seen before.
The American Solar Energy Society works with professionals in all areas of the construction industry to increase awareness of and access to solar energy, particularly photovoltaic (PV) technology. The ASES mission is to foster a growing U.S. solar energy industry by raising the awareness of, access to and use of solar energy for both residential and commercial purposes, promoting ethical business practices that ensure the safe, efficient use of photovoltaic (PV) equipment; providing education relating to education-related topics including PV installation, design, materials selection and system performance evaluation through seminars, technical programs and other activities; and providing information regarding legislative issues relevant to the installation, operation and financing or solar energy projects.
For more than 35 years, ASES has addressed the needs of professionals in all areas of the construction industry by providing networking and education opportunities and promoting public policy that supports solar energy. ASES serves as the voice for solar energy in Congress, state legislatures, regulatory agencies, utility commissions and elsewhere. ASES demonstrates that solar technologies are safe, cost-effective, reliable and environmentally friendly. They also provide jobs, tax revenue and other economic benefits to local communities.
ASES is a 54-year-old nonprofit organization with more than 7,000 members worldwide. ASES is the only national professional organization dedicated solely to the solar and renewable energy industry in the United States.
Solar Energy Education for Architects and Engineers
The Solar Energy Education Program (SEED) is a certification program that integrates the Renewable Design Rating System (R-DRS) with the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED rating system to provide the highest professional and educational training possible for those interested in designing and installing renewable systems on both commercial and residential buildings.
This comprehensive, online certification program enables building industry members to receive hands-on solar energy training from design through system commissioning, including technical-level training in materials procurement, performance evaluation and system cost analysis. The PEER Methodology is one of the foundation pillars of our certification approach. PEER stands for Policy, Economics, Environmental & Social Responsibility. It is an interdisciplinary approach that combines a systems approach to design with analyzing four factors to determine a building’s efficiency, including technical issues such as solar radiation, wind speed, thermal emittance and solar heat gain coefficient.
The Solar Energy Education Program (SEED) is a professional certification program that provides education and training in the Solar Renewable Energy Certificate (SREC), renewable energy architecture and engineering. An independent nonprofit working group of international renewable energy construction industry professionals developed it.
As architects and engineers, you can build on this momentum by incorporating solar design principles into your buildings and infrastructure. Fueled by the renewable energy revolution, this is an exciting time for solar. Advances in photovoltaic (PV) technology, innovative financing options, and power purchase agreements are encouraging creative solar energy development on a scale not seen before.
More than 150 million homes worldwide have been equipped with solar power systems in recent years, saving them more than $6 billion in electricity costs each year. With the help of economic development organizations, these incentives have motivated countries worldwide to set goals for increasing their use of renewable energy. The U.S. is no exception to this trend, and America can lead the way by using proven technologies and innovations being developed internationally.
Integrating Renewable Design Principles
Institutional energy efficiency standards can significantly increase the use of renewable energy technologies. And by incorporating sustainable design principles into your work, you will support the development of this technology.
The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has developed tools to help you create a plan for integrating these renewable components into your buildings and infrastructure projects. The U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is widely considered to be the pre-eminent rating system for building design, construction and operation about sustainability performance management, as well as one of the most demanding rating systems in North America. Through the LEED certification program, building owners and managers can voluntarily benchmark the environmental performance of their building operations and measure and track improvements over time.
To help architects and engineers incorporate renewable energy technologies into their projects and work towards achieving a high LEED rating, the U.S. Green Building Council offers a collection of online resources that address renewable energy technologies on all building types. These online resources include checklists, guidelines and other tools to help you incorporate sustainable design principles into your plans.
In addition to buildings and infrastructure projects, landscape architects can be essential in developing solar-powered landscapes. The U.S. Green Building Council offers Solar Friendly, which provides an overview of landscape architecture design guidelines for all building types. Several resources within the Solar Friendly Program can be used to help you incorporate renewable energy design principles into your projects and work towards achieving a high LEED rating:
To help improve the quality of the built environment by promoting sustainable land use planning, development and construction through education, advocacy and training.
The Business Renewable Resource Center (BRRC) develops and manages multiple programs to create and deliver renewable energy information, technologies, products, training and certification opportunities to business owners, professionals and the public.
The Solar Industry Applications Center (SIAC) develops market strategies addressing business models for sustainable energy manufacturers through research, development and testing.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recognized the importance of solar technology by establishing a Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) in 2007 to accelerate the development of new solar technologies that fit seamlessly into the current electric power grid. Now integrated into the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) SunShot Initiative, this program works to reduce the cost of solar energy systems by 75% within a decade. For more information, visit the SunShot Solar Technologies program online.
Solar panels have been used for over 50 years to provide modest electricity for homes and small businesses, with costs declining and market penetration spreading. The photovoltaic industry is not alone in striving to bring down prices with new methods and materials. The trends towards more efficient, lighter and flexible solar cells and organic and printable solar cells are driving down the cost of solar. The challenge of developing a process to produce high-efficiency multilayer solar cells is full of potential pitfalls, with issues such as light management, cost and lifetimes on the table.
While promising advances have been made in this field through discoveries in the past few years, there is still much work to be done before we have a viable replacement for conventional silicon-based solar cells.
In the short term, there is an urgent need to improve the performance of existing solar cells. Today’s cells mainly use parabolic concentrators – flat panels with curved surfaces – which can only operate in direct sunlight. This technology has been installed on tens of thousands of rooftops worldwide. Still, it will likely be abandoned for newer technologies without integrating them into more efficient and cost-effective systems.
Sustainability and renewable power are increasingly important issues for businesses as well as individuals around the world. The first requirement to make a company sustainable is to reduce its carbon footprint by finding alternative ways of providing energy that helps improve its productivity and profitability. There are also several other ways to reduce your carbon footprint.
Solar energy can be harnessed for various uses, including heating and cooling buildings, providing hot water or electricity generation. The technology is simple enough for a homeowner to install on their roof. Still, large-scale projects are more likely to be implemented by an electric utility or third-party power provider. In addition to these direct uses, solar energy can provide indirect benefits by displacing the need to use nonrenewable resources such as coal and gas in power generation plants.
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