Solar Array Provides Energy to Victor Valley College

The largest concentrated solar array in the United States already is providing renewable energy to Victorville, Calif.’s Victor Valley College—and will ultimately provide 2.6 million kilowatts annually, which equates to 30 percent of the college’s total demand.

After two months of construction, the 1 megawatt solar power plant — created out of a partnership between Victor Valley College and Solar PV specialists SolFocus — is nearly complete, and is situated in 6 acres of land. The plant will eventually consist of 122 Concentrated Solar arrays.

“We considered wind turbines first,” said Bill Greulich, public information officer for Victor Valley College. “We were prepared to install a single unit but decided along the way to abandon the project because the technology was not applicable to our location. We then moved forward with the concept of solar energy as a less intrusive source of renewable energy.”

Two spin-offs from this are the openings of a Public Safety Training Center and a Work Force Training Center within the college to help its students train up for the rapidly emerging solar industry. Supported by SolFocus, the college will be developing curriculum within its existing academic programs to include the installation, operations, and maintenance of solar PV arrays.

Victor Valley College has had a solar training program for some time, though it has been somewhat limited in scope in that it  teaches the basics as they were known at the time, Greulich said. With the new program and center, SolFocus will supply the college with one of their arrays, a packaged curriculum and professional advisors to assist students with the newer technology. “In other areas, we have been teaching land restoration with the use of GIS; we do hybrid car repair and teach for smog certificates,” Greulich said. “We design sustainable construction techniques and other programs.”

And after one of the college’s solar training courses, he said a student should be fully qualified to install, repair and maintain the systems themselves. And on the whole, Greulich said there will be many opportunities career-wise in renewable energy mechanisms.

“In our area, the three things we have are land or earth, sun or solar, and wind,” he said. “So earth, wind and fire create a great climate for the development for all types of renewable energy sources. We will undoubtedly see the development of a great many solar fields, because the cost of delivering energy through the new technology is profitable.”