Solar at the White House

In July and August, three solar energy systems, designed by Steven Strong of Solar Design Associates in Harvard, Massachusetts, were installed on two separate White House buildings. The first of these, a large 8.75 peak-kilowatt photovoltaic (PV) system, was installed on the National Park Service maintenance building located in the southwest corner of the 16-acre (6.5 ha) White House grounds. This system consists of 167 EC-51 PV modules, each rated at 51 watts, manufactured by Evergreen Solar of Marlboro, Massachusetts. Three 2,500-watt Sunny Boy inverters, provided by SMA Americas (a division of the German manufacturer SMA), convert this DC electricity into AC power that is fed into the White House electricity grid.

On the same building, a residential-scale solar water heating system was installed to provide hot water for landscape maintenance personnel. This system is comprised of two 4’ x 8’ (1.2 x 2.4 m) flat-plate collectors made by SunEarth, Inc., of Ontario, California. These panels were installed using a typical stand-off mount in a drain-back configuration (for more on solar water heating, see EBN