Tucson News NowSolar Zone could light Tucson's way to global solar leadership

Solar Zone could light Tucson's way to global solar leadership

By Barbara Grijalva - email

TUCSON, AZ (KOLD) - People in Tucson are working hard to put our city at the forefront of solar energy technology.

They're about to take a huge step, but there are still a lot of questions about solar energy.

With all sorts of technologies being developed, which works the best?

That's what they are going to try to find out here in Tucson, and doing that is expected to bring jobs.

At Tucson Electric Power Company's solar test yard, you can see all sort of solar technology made by different companies with different materials.

TEP is joining forces with the University of Arizona to find out which ones gives the most bang for the buck. They are creating a solar zone at the UA Tech Park on Tucson's south side to help answer that question.

UA Tech Park CEO Bruce Wright says, "We're going to have six different solar technologies that will generate electricity on site. We believe we'll be the largest multi-technology solar demonstration site in the United States. Hopefully that will allow Tucson and southern Arizona to become one of the leaders in solar energy development."

Private companies will spend up to $100 million to build the solar projects. UA researchers will study the projects and help make them better, bringing down the cost of solar, which is now more expensive than coal-generated energy.

Wright says they'll study "new solar technologies, ways to generate solar, how to store it, how to transmit it, and make it an efficient power source."

TEP will buy the energy with money from a surcharge customers already pay every month.

The utility's Joe Salkowski says, "We're going to see these systems in action. They'll be providing power to our customers and hopefully over time we'll get a better sense of what kind of technologies we'll be relying on long term."

Salkowski adds, "It will give us an opportunity to learn about how these systems operate, how to make them more cost-effective, and hopefully bring down the cost of solar power to the point where it might someday be cheaper than coal."

The UA will train the people needed in an industry it's helping create. That means jobs for its graduates, but they're not the only ones.

"It becomes a magnet for attracting the manufacturers, the suppliers, the vendors, all the other people that support the solar industry," Wright says.

He adds, "The benefits of that economically is to build an industry that creates high quality employment for people in the community and creates economic wealth."

Site preparation starts in the Solar Zone at the UA Tech Park September first.

The first project is expected to be online early next year and the Solar Zone is expected to be fully operational in 2012.

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