Envision, ACE unveil new Solar Tree carports and leasing option

Accord­ing to recent stud­ies, about 30 to 40 per­cent of a city’s down­town area is made up of park­ing lots. That’s a lot of wasted sur­face area.But solar car­ports are slowly and surely cov­er­ing some of that space, using pho­to­voltaic pan­els to gen­er­ate power and shade the cars underneath.American Clean Energy and Envi­sion Solar have unveiled a new prod­uct, and a leas­ing struc­ture, that may aid in cov­er­ing up some of the empty asphalt in New Jer­sey, which not only trumps almost every other state in solar devel­op­ment, but has no short­age of park­ing lots.The two com­pa­nies announced today that their new joint prod­uct, the Solar Track­ing Tree, com­bines solar track­ing tech­nol­ogy with an electric-vehicle charg­ing sta­tion, and not to men­tion, some added shade.But an added bonus for the parking-lot owner who is con­sid­er­ing the prod­uct is a new leas­ing option for the Solar Trees. The cus­tomer pays a low monthly fee for the system—no upfront costs.“Our unique, patented design cou­pled with Amer­i­can Clean Ener­gys lease option should result in solar energy tak­ing root to cover black­top and con­crete park­ing lots in New Jer­sey for the ben­e­fit of cus­tomers, patrons, employ­ees and the envi­ron­ment,” said Robert Noble, Envi­sion Solar’s CEO, in a com­pany press release.The two com­pa­nies are hop­ing the lease option will sweeten the pot for poten­tial cus­tomers in New Jersey.“The prob­lem, par­tic­u­larly with smaller com­mer­cial solar canopy deploy­ments to date, has been the inabil­ity to attain scale and scope economies,” said Steve Mor­gan, CEO of Amer­i­can Clean Energy. “Every instal­la­tion until now has been a one-off design with a one-off PPA/financing arrange­ment. This prod­uct offer­ing deliv­ers to the promise of an attrac­tive and func­tional solar canopy with financ­ing in-a-box. Con­struc­tion activ­i­ties are reduced to sim­ple foun­da­tion con­struc­tion, Solar Tree erec­tion and elec­tri­cal inter­con­nec­tion.”Unlike most track­ing sys­tems, which use a fixed-tilt mech­a­nism to fol­low the sun, the Solar Tree moves on a pivot, which allows it to stay on sun even if, heaven for­bid, the sun begins spi­ral­ing in the sky.According to Amer­i­can Clean Energy, each Solar Tree gen­er­ates enough energy to remove 15 tons of CO2, replace the usage of 1,600 gal­lons of gas and power 2.5 homes.

via Envi­sion, ACE unveil new Solar Tree car­ports and leas­ing option : Solar Energy — Clean Energy Author­ity.