VA medical centers go 'green' with solar

The Loma Linda installation.

A Veterans Affairs (VA) medical center located in Dallas and one in Southern California are reaping the financial benefits of photovoltaic (PV) systems, in addition to cutting hundreds of thousands of pounds of greenhouse gas emissions annually.

SunWize Technologies, a Kingston, N.Y.-based PV system distributor and integrator, completed installation of the first PV system ever utilized at a VA facility in September 2008 at the Jerry L. Pettis Memorial Medical Center in Loma Linda, Calif. The facility has cut its electrical bill by about $60,000 annually as well as eliminated the emission of about 694,000 pounds of CO2 each year.

The system includes 1,584 Sanyo modules roof-mounted onto SunLink Corp. racks and utilizes an Advanced Energy Solaron 333 kilo­watt (kW) inverter. The system is monitored by Fat Spaniel Technologies Inc.

SunWize Technologies also installed a 337 kW system—the largest PV system in Texas—at the Dallas VA Medical Center in February 2009. It is saving an estimated $50,000 annually in electri­city costs and has cut about 305,000 pounds of CO2 over a seven-month period in 2009.

The system consists of 1,728 Sanyo modules mounted onto SunLink Corp. racks. The system utilizes an Advanced Energy Solaron 333 kW inverter monitored by the medical center's Schneider Electric Power­Logic energy and power management system and Fat Spaniel Technologies Inc.