The solar panel project being constructed in Bakersfield College’s northeast parking lot is expected to be complete and providing energy to the school by November, with full accessibility to the lot made available by the end of September.

Funded by grants and incentives from the state of California and PG&E, construction on the $8.3 million dollar project has extended past its expected deadline.

“The hope was that the project could be completed or at least the construction phase by the beginning of school,” said Greg Chamberlain, president of BC.

Delayed by the Division of the State Architect with three weeks of paperwork processing and construction site safety verification, the project took longer to initiate than scheduled.

“If we’re just putting up a field, fenced off and no students could go near it we wouldn’t need that DSA approval, but because students are going to be parking under [the photo field] it had to be approved,” said Chamberlain.

Construction began on May 24, 2010, with Sunpower Corporation managing the building process and hiring local contractors to install the photovoltaic field.

“We should be done with the construction you see out there, with the crane and the interruption of parking, by the end of September,” said Lamont Schiers, director of Administrator Services at BC. “By October, we should be able to bring it online.”

Once the carports and panels are installed, minor construction and the system test will take place. According to Amber Chiang, director of marketing and public relations at BC, the system test and electrical assemblage should not interfere with parking.

When fully completed, the panels will move and articulate with the movement of the sun, collecting energy throughout the day.

“The photovoltaic field is going to give us about a megawatt, or about a third of our energy usage,” said Chamberlain.

When the campus is not drawing power from the field, energy generated will either supplement the schools electrical usage or be fed back into the power grid.

“Every one of those panels is hooked to an electrical line that runs down into the ground and over to some inverters,” says Schiers. “The photo fields produce direct current or DC current, and that needs to be converted to alternating current or AC current. That is what those inverters do and [they} hook right into our main electrical meter, that way it will either help supplement our electrical usage or put energy back into the grid.”

Incited by incentives from PG&E, the photo field project, according to Chiang, will stabilize the electricity cost rate for the next 25 years.

“For several years now PG&E has given a variety of rebates on various energy savings like home rebates, like if you replace your refrigerator with an energy efficient refrigerator there might be a rebate from PG&E,” said Chamberlain. “It is the same concept but on a much larger scale.”

Following suit of the completed chiller loop, the hydroseeding method conducted on the baseball fields, and Thermal Energy Storage Tank completed last spring, the solar field will provide the BC campus another eco-friendly energy resource that might be expanded upon in the future.

“Down the road, might we look at other solar possibilities? Absolutely, depending on how things go with this field and what rebates might be available later, we might consider expanding to one of the other parking lots,” said Chamberlain.

“What would be nice is if we could put a carport field over in the southwest lot and the southeast lot, because this is only going to cover a third of our usage. So if we had three of them it would cover all of our usage,” said Schiers.

Future projects concentrated around environmental consciousness are currently in the making.

“We are in the final planning stages for a renovation of the speech, arts and music building, ” said Chamberlain.

With plans being designed to meet the highest certification level of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, the renovation will allow the building to be cooled and heated with less energy use.

“Our hope is, when that facility is remolded, it will be LEED’s Platinum certified,” said Chamberlain.

As for other green projects in the near future, Schiers said, “This is what we have currently planned today, but that’s not saying that tomorrow or next year or say in four or five years, another opportunity presents itself.”