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New Solar Power Installation at the Carrizo Plain National Monument
Washburn Ranch House located on the Carrizo Plain National Monument |
The Carrizo Plain is the largest remaining remnant of the original San Joaquin habitat, and is one of the largest undeveloped grassland areas in Central California. Photovoltaics have been a fixture of the Carrizo Plain area for more than 20 years. For example, Atlantic Richfield Oil Company (ARCO) installed a 5.2-megawatt grid-connected system in the Carrizo Plain in 1983. But the plant operated until 1994 at a loss of 6 to 8 cents per kilowatt hour and was dismantled in the late 1990s. Many of the plant's modules were resold throughout the world.
Today, photovoltaics are in the news once again on the Carrizo Plain, but on a much more economical scale. The Carrizo Plain National Monument (CPNM) recently installed a new photovoltaic system at the Washburn Ranch Administrative Site. The CPNM is managed through a partnership with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the California Department of Fish and Game and The Nature Conservancy (TNC). The CPNM consists of 250,000 acres of land set aside to protect threatened and endangered species, significant Native American rock painting and other archaeological sites, important geologic viewing sites such as the San Andreas Fault, as well as maintaining opportunities for recreation, scientific research, and other visitor use.
Washburn Ranch Administrative Site includes a large modern ranch house, a double-wide modular home, several barns, a maintenance shop, hookups for travel trailers, and a generator building. The Washburn Ranch Administrative Site now supports Monument management by providing a maintenance yard for staff to perform equipment maintenance, storage of supplies, and fabrication of materials needed for the daily operations. It also serves as a place for meetings and other administrative functions. Temporary housing is provided at the site for visiting researchers, seasonal employees, and volunteers.
This array was installed in November 2003 by the Bureau of Land Management maintenance personnel. |
Electrical power for the Washburn Ranch has historically been supplied by diesel or propane generators. The nearest tie to the electrical grid is more than nine miles away. In recent years, up to $50,000 a year was spent on propane fuel costs for two onsite generators.
In March of 2003, monument staff met with Trent Duncan and Glen Yamashita, engineers with BLM, and with Hal Post and Larry Moore of Sandia National Laboratories to assess this facility and determine if a photovoltaic power system would be more economical.
Summer cooling represented a significant portion of the summer load. The recommendations from the assessment included shifting cooling from air conditioning units to evaporative cooling, and replacing refrigerators with high efficiency models and incandescent lights with compact fluorescent lamps. With the significant increase in efficiency, the Washburn Ranch loads were estimated to be 28 kilowatt-hours per day in the summer and 10 kilowatt-hours per day the rest of the year. It was determined the facility could operate with a 3-kilowatt photovoltaic array, 120-kilowatt-hour flooded battery, two 5,500-watt inverters, and a 200-amp auxiliary battery charger. An existing 55-kilowatt propane fueled generator was left in place and integrated into the system. It is anticipated that the generator will be required every 5 days in the summer months to meet the larger cooling loads.
Inverter and batter system located in the generator building at Washburn Ranch, Carrizo Plain National Monument. |
Sunwize Technologies, a GSA vendor, supplied the equipment, wiring diagrams, and operation manuals. BLM maintenance personnel installed the system. Including cooling and lighting upgrades, the installed system cost $53,000 (not including labor). The new system was commissioned on December 19, 2003, and has been operating flawlessly.
"This new photovoltaic system is a reliable and economic addition to the Monument,"says Monument Manager Marlene Braun. "Our resource conservation efforts now extend beyond habitat management to our electrical system at our largest infrastructure site on the Monument. We hesitated to use our generators much at the Washburn Site because it was so expensive. What a pleasure it is now to be able to turn on a light switch without having to turn the generators on! And the fuel savings from this project can be diverted for other important land management needs."
For more information, contact Trent Duncan, Bureau of Land Management, at 801-539-4090 or Trent_Duncan@blm.gov.
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