Though more than six months late, the U.S. Dept. of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., flipped the switch earlier this month on the final section of its nearly 2.5-MW photovoltaic system to power DOE's ultra-energy-efficient Research Support Facility. Turning on the 1.1-MW PV array on the RSF's parking garage means NREL can begin tracking whether the office building-garage complex is hitting its net-zero energy-use goal of generating as much power annually as it uses.
"We are meeting our energy-efficiency targets," says Shanti Pless, NREL's senior research engineer. "This will allow us to meet our energy-generation targets."