The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced that it has made three new technical assistance awards under the Solar America Showcases project, which is run by the Solar Energy Technologies Program. These awards provide technical assistance from solar energy experts to high-visibility, large-scale solar installations.

The three new Solar America Showcases winners are:

• The Hartman Company: This project involves a 115 kilowatt solar photovoltaic installation at the Hyatt Regency Resort in Scottsdale, Arizona, which is part of a master plan to replicate a number of solar energy technologies at other Hyatt facilities.
• Philadelphia Water Department: This project involves new photovoltaic installations to power drinking water treatment facilities, providing up to 7.6 megawatts (MW) of new capacity.
• Southwest Solar Technologies, Inc.: This Phoenix-based development at Riverpoint Solar Research Park involves a solar test and demonstration installation, providing 1 MW of combined solar and storage energy.

Technical assistance to these award winners includes assistance in areas such as:

• Regulatory and permitting assistance
• Structural analysis of the existing building
• Solar financing
• Suggestions for structural upgrades to support the new solar system
• Architectural, mechanical and electrical design assistance to insure compliance with state-of-the-art solar design principles and building codes
• In addition, technical experts will assist with overall project management and provide best practices and "lessons learned" from other solar projects.

The Solar America Showcases activity is part of the Solar America Initiative (SAI), which seeks to make electricity generated from solar photovoltaics systems cost-competitive with grid electricity by 2015. Solar America Showcases are chosen through a competitive award process, and preference is given to large-scale, highly visible, highly replicable installations that involve cutting-edge solar technologies or novel applications of solar.

Technical assistance is provided by experts from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, DOE's Southeast and Southwest Regional Experiment Stations at the Florida Solar Energy Center and New Mexico State University, and the competitively-selected engineering firm CH2M Hill.