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Designed by: Rowan Beckensten, Scott Clowser, Rowan Cooper and John Hunter

Figure 1: HWMA Waste Transfer Station (Meyers 2012)

Executive Summary

A net-metered grid tie solar system was designed for the Humboldt Waste Management Authority (HWMA) Transfer Station in Eureka, CA. A 246 kW system was determined to be optimal given the likelihood of increased energy demand by HWMA. The system life cycle is 25 years and the total present value life cycle cost of the system is $1,066,801, equating to an installed cost of $4.79 per watt. The maximum interest rate that would allow HWMA to break even on this PV design within the 25-year life cycle is 6.47%. The State of California is currently offering loans with interest rates as low as 1% (Energy Efficiency Financing 2012). This would mean that HWMA would not only break even, but would make money on the PV system over the life cycle of the system. The first year savings of the system is $55,273 (Table 2). The annual savings will decrease linearly by 10% over the first ten years of the system, and by 10% over the final 15 years of the 25-year life of the system (Error! Reference source not found.). This decrease is a direct result of the reduction in efficiency of the PV panels as they age. An electricity rate increase of 3% per year was used in the economic analysis based on the PG&E online solar savings tool (PG&E 2012). The annual savings of the system used in the economic analysis requires the assumption that the Transfer Station annual demand for energy exceeds the generation. This assumption is invalid based on current consumption, but would be reasonable if additional equipment such as a materials recovery facility was operated on site.

Background

In 1997, HWMA was established to manage a cost-effective system for the disposal of solid waste in Humboldt County. HWMA owns and operates a waste collection facility called the Transfer Station, which is located at 1059 West Hawthorne, in Eureka, CA. HWMA is a joint powers of authority made up by the following municipalities: Arcata, Blue Lake, Eureka, Ferndale, Rio Dell, and Humboldt County. A board of directors, made up of six elected officials that represent each municipality, governs HWMA. The waste coming into the transfer station includes garbage, green waste, recycling, household hazardous waste, tires, and electronics. Over 90,000 tons of solid waste per year comes into the transfer station (HWMA 2012). The solid waste is sorted, condensed and trucked to larger facilities in Anderson or Medford, Oregon. HWMA works cooperatively with local garbage collection companies, recycling centers, and other organizations to appropriately divert and dispose of waste generated within the communities. HWMA is the largest waste collection station within Humboldt County and is expected to endure for decades because of the difficulty involved with permitting a new site for solid waste sorting and transfer. HWMA is interested in offsetting the Transfer Stations electricity consumption. Electricity is purchased from Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) and is subject to a time varied pricing scheme, starting November 1, 2012. A grid-connected solar electric system is being considered to offset the electricity consumption, and would be located on top of HWMAs Transfer Station. They want to offset the amount of electricity purchased from PG&E during peak rate periods. HWMA is currently in the process of updating their strategic plan and wants to develop several design alternatives to propose to the HWMA board of directors. HWMA does not have a definitive budget as it is co-owned by Humboldt County and surrounding municipalities and new projects must be brought before the board for approval. The board of directors decide what funds will be allocated to HWMAs future projects. Therefore, having several options with different levels of initial capital cost and pay back periods will be useful when addressing the board. HWMA is the main and largest waste management group in Humboldt County and they expect that their business will be in existence for at least the next fifty years. This indicates that the payback period of the system could be larger than most commercial and residential payback periods, while still being viable. 1

Site Resource Assessment

The planned site for the grid connected solar electric system is on the roof of the Transfer Station. There are four discrete useful roof sections on the main transfer station building (Figure 2). There is negligible shading from surrounding obstacles (Figure 10), but there are self-shading effects from the roofs themselves and from the raised skylights on the Upper Recycling Center Roof (URCR). Sections of the East Tipping Floor Roof (ETFR) are shaded by the URCR in the morning and by the West Tipping Floor Roof (WTFR) in the afternoon.

Figure 2: Google Sketchup model of the transfer station exterior with maximum area available for module placement on each roof section.

The building was drafted in Google SketchUp to model the self-shading effects (Figure 2). The roof space available for module placement was determined using the following constraints: Shading on the ETFR from the adjacent roofs 10 am 2 pm, year round Shading on the URCR from raised skylights 10 am to 2 pm, year round Client specification that the ETFR & WTFR skylights cannot be shaded 3 foot wide access/fire safety corridor around the perimeter of each roof

Accounting for the transfer station roof tilt angle of 5 degrees, local horizontal solar resource data recorded over the past five years at the Humboldt Bay Remote Access Weather Station (RAWS) was transformed into the resource available on the roof (Figure 3) (RAWS 2012).

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Electric Analysis

HWMA purchases electricity from Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) and up until this point they have been subject to an A-10 pricing scheme (Figure 7). The PG&E historical A-10 rate increased incrementally for HWMA (Figure 8). On November 1, 2012, PG&E is applying a time varying pricing scheme to customers like HWMA in the medium commercial bracket (150,000 kWh/year or greater). HWMA will begin to be billed using the A-1 TOU billing scheme (Figure 7). The A-1 TOU pricing scheme has a partial peak and off peak rate for winter months and a peak, partial peak, and off peak rate during summer months (Figure 7). HWMA must operate during peak hours regardless of changes in utility costs; the new pricing scheme will likely increase summer utility costs because of peak pricing. The solar electric system should target this peak load time naturally due to time availability of the solar resource. The main single power load in the transfer station is assumed to be the bailer. The bailer is a machine that 3

compresses large solid waste, such as household appliances, into bails that can be loaded on trucks and shipped out of the area to be recycled or land-filled. Two workers are required to operate the bailer for six hours a day between the hours of 8:00 am and 5:00 pm. Lights are the second main power consumers at HWMA. They run continuously from 6:30 am to 6:30 pm to ensure OSHA standards of adequate working light. Additional power consuming equipment includes: electric bay doors, computers and office equipment, electric heating, and a welder. The majority of the heavy equipment used to move the trash is fueled by diesel and cannot be offset by the solar electric system. HWMA plans on obtaining a trash-sorting machine known as the materials recovery facility (MRF). Use of a MRF could result in a significant source of power consumption in the future. The demand for electric power is increased in the winter months (more lighting and heating costs) and in the spring months (spring cleaning). HWMAs total monthly power consumption increased steadily from October of 2008 through August of 2012 (Figure 9). The total yearly energy consumption of HWMA increased from 132,240 kWh/yr to 169,680 kWh/yr, from 2009 to 2011.

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The solar module was selected based on the price/watt, reputable company name, module warranty and module efficiency. Seaside solar installations require special consideration for salt mist corrosion; therefore, modules were selected only from companies that offered a salt mist corrosion rating (Scurfield 2012). Three modules were selected from Sharp, CanadianSolar and Kyocera. CanadianSolar offered a module at the most competitive price with the highest efficiency rating and the best warranty of the three modules compared (Table 7). The CS6P245M is a 245 W monocrystalline solar module with a reported efficiency of 15.85%. CanadianSolar was recommended by a local solar contractor because of its salt mist corrosion rating and its use of the Zep mounting system that reduces installation time (Scurfield 2012). The specially designed frame allows for rail-free, fast installation with the industry's most reliable grounding system (CanadianSolar). The CanadianSolar module is the optimal choice given its low comparative cost and competitive warranty in addition to meeting the necessary project criteria. The solar industry has moved toward flush-mounted systems because the cost of modules has become a smaller margin of the overall system cost. The extra cost involved with installing a non-flush-mounted system, as opposed to installing extra modules, is typically not justified. 4

To avoid future complications introduced by a penetrating rack mounting system, a nonpenetrating rack mounting system by UniRac was selected. The ACECLAMP JR. mounts easily to a standing seam metal roof with a cost of $300 per 8-panel rack. The total cost of racking the modules was $37,800. Only south-facing roof slopes are being considered for the design, as flush-mounting will be used according to industry standard and north facing flush mounts are not economical.

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The component used to connect the direct current (DC) photovoltaic (PV) modules to the alternating current (AC) electric utility grid is the inverter. When choosing inverters, it is common practice to use a model that is too small to run the entire PV system, and install multiple inverter/PV-module strings in parallel. This provides some redundancy in the system so that, should a fault occur in one string, the rest of the system will still function as designed. Four inverters were analyzed for HWMA with outputs ranging from 8 kW to 100 kW. Inverters were compared on a cost per watt basis, and total purchase price for the number of inverters necessary to accommodate PV system output. HWMAs PV system will need inverters capable of providing upwards of 20 kW due to the generation potential of the available solar resource. A table of the inverters that were considered can be found in in Appendix C (Table 8). The best inverter choice is the combination of three Chint Power CPS SC20KTL-DO 20 kW, and two Chint Power CPS SC100KTL-D 100 kW inverters. The total cost for this combination is $126,658.20, which includes a 20-year warranty. The cost per watt is $0.83, which is 15% more than the SMA Sunny Boy 8 kW inverter, which is $0.72 per watt. Providing enough of the SMA inverters to meet HWMAs power needs would require 31 inverters, making the total price $178,250.00; therefore, these inverters were not selected for the design. The FroniusIG-Plus11.4-1 was too expensive in all areas. The Chint Power inverters will provide a combination of redundancy and affordability. Table 8 summarizes the inverters considered for the design of the HWMA PV system.

System Design

The 246 kW system utilizes all of the south-facing roofs. The design will include solar modules on the bailer room roof, south-facing roof of the recycling center and south-facing roof of the 5

east-tipping floor. Each roof was filled with the maximum number of modules, with the exception of providing maintenance and fire safety paths. The module layout was set up to allow for the modules to be easily connected in series strings that meet voltage requirements for the selected inverters (Figure 4).

Figure 4: System components layout with solar modules in dark grey

The 245 Watt solar modules produce 12.634 A (mpp) and 30.3 V (mpp) and were arranged into series strings of 16 modules providing 484.8 V to each inverter. Series strings were routed in parallel to inverters based on inverter size using combiner boxes. Two groups of 25 parallel strings were routed to 100kW Chint inverters. One group of 5 parallel strings was routed to a 20 kW Chint inverter and two groups of 4 parallel strings were routed to 20 kW Chint inverters.

For safety during system maintenance, shut off switches were built into the system on the DC feed side just before the inverters, and an AC combiner box was with a shut off switch was built 6

in between the inverters and the grid tie meter. The system diagrams along with string calculations are given below (Figure 5).

Figure 5: System schematic and string calculations

Economic Analysis

An economic analysis was performed on the system design to determine the feasibility of the project.

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The system has a cost of $639,636 and is approximately a 246KW system (Table 6). The system cost was broken into five different categories (Figure 6). The categories assessed were PV modules, inverters, hardware, overhead, and installation costs. The overhead category includes engineering and planning costs, overhead cost for the installer, and any permitting required. The 7

inverters category includes the inverters and the cost of the 20-year extended warranty. The hardware category includes UniRac system, combiner boxes, shutoff switches, wires, conduits, mounting equipment, etc. The price of the PV Modules is the most significant cost totaling $276,595. Overhead and inverter categories are similar with costs of $110,343 and $102,845 respectively. Installation is based on paying an installer $50 dollars per hour and the entire cost of the install is $98,784. Hardware had a little impact on the total cost and contributed $51,069.&

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There are two sources of positive cash flow from the project; energy savings and rebates. 6"3"# 92-(=>)$'512=.) The energy generated on an annual basis was found using five years of monthly Remote Access Weather Station (RAWS) solar data from the Humboldt Bay RAWS (RAWS 2012), the number of modules, and module performance at NOCT (Appendix Error! Reference source not found.). This energy was divided among the three billing brackets for A-1 TOU schedule (PG&E 2012) (Peak, Partial Peak & Off Peak) using solar pathfinder percentage breakdowns for latitude 37-43 degrees north (Table 1).

Table 1: Percentages of solar power available during PG&E billing brackets (Derived from the solar pathfinder tool for latitude 37 43 degrees North)

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The associated cost of the power produced is equated to annual savings of the due to the system. Currently there is no information available about the daily time varied load profile for the HWMA transfer station. The Annual energy consumption at the transfer station is less than the annual production of the system. Therefore the assumption that the HWMA transfer station must uses more power than is being generated at all times (which must be true for the energy savings to take place) is unfounded. Recommendations for dealing with this shortcoming in the analysis are presented in the conclusions section and executive summary. The first year savings of the system is $55,273 (Table 2).

Table 2: Annual/Monthly Energy Savings

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The annual savings will decrease linearly by 10% over the first ten years of the system, and by 10% over the final 15 years of the 25-year life of the system (Error! Reference source not found.). This decrease is a direct result of the reduction in efficiency of the PV panels as they age. The annual savings of the system is used in the economic analysis, which requires the assumption that the transfer stations annual demand for energy exceeds the generation. This assumption is invalid based on current consumption but would be reasonable if additional equipment (MRF unit) was operated on site. 6"3"3 <-?'0-.) HWMA qualifies for a California Solar Initiative performance-based rebate, which is mandatory for all systems over 30KW (California Energy Commission 2012). Through this rebate HWMA

10

will make $0.088 per kWh produced, on a monthly basis for the first 48 months of operation, which comes out to an estimated $26,030 per year for the first four years (Table 3).

Table 3: California performance rebate revenues for energy production ($0.088/kWhr)

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The economic analysis incorporates capital costs, operation and maintenance costs, discount rate, inflation, a yearly electricity rate increase, and the California Solar Initiative rebate. Results for the economic analysis are summarized in Table 4.
Table 4: Major economic factors for HWMA PV design.

System Life Time Max Discount Rate Inflation Rate Capital Cost O&M Cost Life Cycle PW Cost

25 Years 6.47% 2.50% $639,636.78 $4,800.00 $1,066,801.74 11

The capital cost of the design is $639,636.07, which would incur a yearly loan payment of $38,426.07 over the life of the PV system. The yearly operation and maintenance (O&M) costs are projected to be approximately $4800.00 per year. O&M costs include washing PV modules to remove debris, inspection of the system by a qualified inspector, and replacement of miscellaneous parts including the inverters at the end of their warranty period of 20 years. The total present value life cycle costs of the system come to $1,066,801.74, equating to an installed cost of $4.79 per watt. The electricity rate increase used was a 3% increase every year. This was based on PG&Es online solar savings tool. The maximum interest rate that would allow HWMA to break even on this PV design within a 25-year life cycle is 6.47%. The State of California is currently offering loans with interest rates as low as 1% (Energy Efficiency Financing 2012). This would mean that HWMA would not only break even, but would make money on the PV system over the life cycle of the system.

Key Findings

The system designed and proposed has the following properties. 1. The 178 kW system will require a capital investment of $1 million giving it a competitive $4.97 cost per installed watt (very competitive with similar systems). 2. It produces more energy annually (~236 GW hrs) than the waste transfer facility consumes (~180 GW hrs). 3. The system has an IRR of ~ 6.5% which, given the expectance of much lower loan interest rates means the project has a net economic benefit at the end of its 25 year lifetime.

Conclusions & Recommendations

The profitability of this system is heavily reliant on a key assumption about the energy savings (that all energy produced would have otherwise been purchased). More information about the load profile at the transfer station should be collected to determine how well the load matches availability. It should also be noted that the system is oversized for current consumption. This system might be useful with a feed in tariff billing structure instead of TOU or if a large load was added to operations such as a materials recovery facility; otherwise the system is oversized. It is possible to meet the demands of the transfer station and maintain day lighting inside the facility. 12

The economics work out better the sooner the system is built because of the rebate. Unforeseen expenses due to OSHA and the roof skylights might pose a problem. The old roof structure needs to be assessed to determine if the increased load of photovoltaic modules will cause any structural danger. More attention should be given to the new billing scheme, make sure you know which one you will be on before any decisions are made.

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10 Works Cited
ARB. Particulate Matter Overview. 2005 !"# 25-April. http://www.arb.ca.gov/research/aaqs/caaqs/pm/pm.htm (accessed 2012 !"# 26-October). California Energy Commission. Solar California Solar Initiative Rebates. 10 31, 2012. http://www.gosolarcalifornia.ca.gov/csi/rebates.php (accessed 10 31, 2012). CanadianSolar. CanadianSolar CS6P. 1 1, 12. www.canadian-solar.com (accessed 10 23, 12). Energy Efficiency Financing. 2012. http://www.energy.ca.gov/efficiency/financing/ (accessed 11 14, 2012). Humboldt, County of. 1994. http://co.humboldt.ca.us/planning/genplan/framewk/index.htm (accessed 2012 !"# 11-10). HWMA. Contact/About Us. 2012. http://hwma.net/about (accessed October 8, 2012). Jacobson, Arne. Picture of PathFinder Tool. Arcata. Meyers, Scottie Lee. THE RECYCLABLE JOURNEY. September 12, 2012. http://scottieleemeyers.com/2012/09/12/the-recyclable-journey-from-the-end-of-your-drivewayto-the-edge-of-the-world/ (accessed October 07, 2012). NCUAQMD. 2012. http://www.ncuaqmd.org/index.php?page=rules.regulations (accessed 2012 !"# 11-October). PG&E. 2012. http://www.pge.com/tariffs/tm2/pdf/ELEC_SCHEDS_A-1.pdf. . Incentives and Financial Resources. 1 1, 2012. http://www.pge.com/mybusiness/energysavingsrebates/solar/incentives/index.shtml (accessed 11 14, 2012). . Time Varying Pricing. 10 1, 2012. http://www.pge.com/mybusiness/energysavingsrebates/timevaryingpricing/ (accessed 10 09, 2012).

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RAWS. October 09, 2012. http://www.raws.dri.edu/cgi-bin/rawMAIN.pl?caCHBB (accessed October 09, 2012). Scurfield, Ben, interview by Matt Herman. Recommendations for Seaside Solar Power System (9 25, 12). SWE. Noise Assessment : Hermosa West Wind Farm Project. Shell Wind Energy, 2010.

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11 Appendix A: Electric Utility Pricing

This section has information about the current PG&E time of use pricing, and historical electricity price increases. PG&E has various pricing schemes for commercial electricity users (Figure 7). The pricing schemes are based on demand. Starting in November 1, 2012, many commercial users are required to switch from the A-10 rate schedule to a time of use (TOU) pricing scheme to help stabilize and create a more efficient electrical grid in California. HWMA is required to move from A-10 to A-1 TOU rate scheme.

16