Originally published December 18 2005
New York subway station proves the effectiveness of solar power
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
New York's Stillwell Avenue subway station promises to revolutionize public transportation, as its design accommodates 60,000 square feet of integrated solar paneling on its roof, and these panels can produce 210 kilowatts of power to cover two-thirds of the station's energy requirements.
The Stillwell Avenue station has been heralded as a revolutionary design thanks to its extensive use of solar power -- a rarity in municipal transportation services in the United States.
On a sunny day, 60,000 square feet of integrated solar paneling on its roof can generate 210 kilowatts of power, enough to meet two-thirds of the station's energy requirements.
Though the beginnings of the Stillwell Avenue renovation project date back to the 1990s, full train service on all four convergent subway lines only returned to the station this past June.
On the other side of the continent, solar cells do double duty by both shading cars in the parking lot of La Sierra train station in Riverside, California, and powering elevators, ticket machines and lighting for the Riverside County Transportation Commission.
Craig Munger, an electrical engineer with building design firm Solar Design Associates, cites a project in Edinburgh, Scotland, that uses solar energy to illuminate bus shelters with high-intensity light-emitting diodes.
The main train station in Zurich, Switzerland, also features a PV installation.
In New York, architectural firm Kiss + Cathcart worked with the city's Metropolitan Transportation Authority to produce the station.
Rather than drawing its power from traditional polycrystalline displays mounted on a flat roof, the Stillwell Avenue station gets its juice from 2,730 building-integrated PV panels, or BIPVs, built right into a curvilinear glass roof.
Should an individual panel need to be replaced, the unitized construction of the roof would make it easy to lift out a defective BIPV section and replace it with a fresh one.
Total renovation costs approached $300 million, though it's not clear how much of that came from expenses related to the solar roof.
Refurbishing and installing solar panels in Germany's Lehrter Station cost �4.3 million in 2002, according to environmental group European Actions for Renewable Energies.
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