Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay is referred to as "The Rock" and was home to a notorious prison for 75 years. NREL recently helped the National Park Service and the DOE Federal Energy Management Program transform the island's electricity source from diesel fuel to photovoltaic panels on the rooftop of the Cellhouse building. Courtesy of the National Park Service
7/30/2012 - Islands face a double threat in our warming world. Rising seas threaten to sweep them from the map; dependence on the fossil fuels largely responsible for those rising seas exposes island populations and economies to increasingly burdensome energy costs.
Until recently, Alcatraz Island, perched 1.5 miles from Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco Bay, could not operate without imported fuel. When I toured the island with National Park Service (NPS) staff in August 2010, Jim Calvinperez, the facilities manager and chief engineer, told me that 2,000 gallons of diesel fuel had to be shipped to the island weekly in order to keep the generators in the power plant humming.
The Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the NPS unit that manages Alcatraz, used $3.6 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to install a solar-powered microgrid on the island. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Bill Scanlon recently published an overview of the project. read more>>>
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