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The Solar Museum
An 8-story wall of solar panels, 234 in all, will give a big energy boost to the Milwaukee Public Museum.
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Berglund Construction recently started installing an eight-story wall of solar panels at the Milwaukee Public Museum, along W. Wells St. The $1.2 million project will replace a deteriorating marble wall with 234 solar panels, made by Milwaukee based Helios USA, and improve the building’s envelop to enhance energy efficiency. Once complete, the panels, according to a report by HGA, will generate approximately 77,000 kilowatt hours of power every year, and should generate a $300,000 savings over 30 years. The panels should be generating electricity by the end of 2013.
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Phenomenal! Any report on how much of the buildings use this satisfies? And is the $300k savings *After* the expense?
Sadly this story is not completely accurate. Apparently Berglund has once again started a project in the city w/o permits (maybe that is the way it is done in Chicago) only to discover after starting demolition that combustible materials (PV solar panels) can not be placed on the walls of high-rise buildings in keeping with building codes.
Hopefully a solution can be engineered or designed to meet the requirements or a variance obtained as the idea is certainly laudable, if not ideally efficient with panels placed at 90 degrees to the horizontal rather than the recommended 43 degrees at our latitude. We do need to move away from non-renewable energy sources and this would be a highly visible step in the right direction. There are examples in other parts of the world. Maybe the architects, engineers and code officials can figure it out.