Portland's new Web site should spark the area

http://xpresssurveys.com/home-insurance-coverage.html
The site will also detai l potential carbon andenergy savings, as well as how much a consumere could save using various tax credits and other City officials say the tool, called the Oregon Clean Energy Map, will boost the profilre of one of the state’es fastest growing industries and promote Portland as a national hotbed of solat energy activity. “The idea is to really get peoplee excited about solar and show them that othed people in the community are doing it and that solar workwin Portland,” said Lee Rahr, solar programk coordinator for the city’s Bureau of Planning and The project is the result of Portland’s designation as a Solare America City, a U.S.
Departmeng of Energy program in which 25 citiews receive a totalof $4.9 million in grantes and technical assistance to invest in solafr technology. The city received a two-year $200,00p0 cash grant as part of the program. It also receivezs about $250,000 in technical assistancew from the Department of which covered theestimated $30,00o0 cost of the Oregon Clean Energy Map. Portlanx will become one of about a dozen of the Solatr America cities to use the program to deploy solar map Web sitex in a project being led out of the Portlandr officeof , the global engineering firm headquarterexd near Denver that was founded in Corvallis.
The idea was spawnecd a few years ago afterr San Francisco Mayor Gavij Newsom launched a goal ofhavinhg 10,000 San Francisco rooftops adorned with solar photovoltaidc systems by 2010. San Francisco then contracted with CH2M Hill to come up witha “The No. 1 thing they needed to do is educatedthe public,” said Steph Stoppenhagen, who is leading the solar mappinh initiative out of CH2M Hill’ s offices near Portland State University. San Francisco’sd solar map was launched two years ago, with CH2M Hill retainingy the licensing rights to the prograk so it could offer it tootheer cities.
Using Google Map satellitde images, CH2M Hill’s system promptz users to type intheir address. The map zoomsx in and highlightstheir rooftop. A box will pop up detailintg the roof’s square footage, its estimated photovoltaicc potential, the amount of electricit a solar electric system could how much electricity would be savedper year, and how many poundse of carbon would be spared by employing a In a separate box, useras can get price estimates for varying sizes of residential and commercial systems.
The Web site will then calculated discounts from incentive and taxcredit programs, whicuh in Oregon can accounf for up to 80 percent of the cost of a CH2M Hill can add or subtractt features if necessary. Salt Lake City, for example, is considerinb a feature that would allow users to judges aesthetic appeal by dragging and dropping pictures of commonlyy used solar panels onto the imagde oftheir roof. In Sacramento, the companu worked with the electric utilityt on a function that allowz users to see how much money they would have saved on previous electric bills by using a solaerphotovoltaic system.
Portland’s map, for now, will be a basic version, with dots showing existing photovoltaic and sola r thermal installations while helping usersz calculate the cost savings and benefits of installingb solar ontheir rooftop. It will also feature a thermometer denotingthe city’s progress in reachint its goal of hosting 5 megawatts of installe d solar energy systems by 2012. The city is now at 3.2 Unlike other cities, Portland opted not to call the sitea “Soladr Map.
” Instead, it chosee the name Oregon Clean Energy Map out of the hope that othedr municipal governments might want to work with the city on expandinh the map’s territory, which now just covere Portland and Multnomah County.