City of Houston Prepares to Buy 10 Megawatts of Solar Power

---

Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--In an effort to be a "green" city, the city of Houston, Texas, released a request for proposal (RFP) in 2008 to purchase 10 megawatts (MW) of photovoltaic solar power. Before the RFP, Houston's General Services Department conducted a solar power analysis and design specifications for a brownfield solar park at a closed landfill with technical assistance from SRA International (NYSE:SRX) (Fairfax, Virginia), the Environmental Protection Agency and Tetra Tech Incorporated (NASDEQ:TTEK) (Pasadena, California). According to Karl Pepple, Houston's Director of Environmental Programs, the city expects to select a build-own-operate and maintenance vendor shortly and hopes to start receiving solar power by the end of the calendar year.

The new facility is expected to utilize 150 acres of the landfill or about 15 acres per MW. Two main designs are being considered: fixed tilt mounted solar array panels and axis tracking mounted arrays. To utilize the landfill, it will cost an estimated $7,000 per acre. The total investment cost of photovoltaic projects typically will run approximately $4,000 per kilowatt. This would help to diversify the renewable energy resources in addition to the wind power the city already purchases to operate city services. The entire 300 acres may be developed in the future, bringing the total capacity of solar power to 20 MW.

Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is a marketing information service specializing in industrial process, energy and financial related markets with products and services ranging from industry news, analytics, forecasting, plant and project databases, as well as multimedia services.