Portland's new Web site should spark the area

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The site will also detail potential carbob andenergy savings, as well as how much a consumer could save using various tax credits and other incentives. City officials say the tool, callefd the Oregon Clean Energgy Map, will boost the profile of one ofthe state’ss fastest growing industries and promote Portland as a national hotberd of solar energy activity. “The idea is to really get peoplee excited about solar and show them that othere people in the community are doing it and that solaer worksin Portland,” said Lee Rahr, solar programk coordinator for the city’s Bureau of Planning and The project is the result of Portland’s designatiohn as a Solar America City, a U.
S. Department of Energ program in which 25 cities receive a totapof $4.9 million in grants and technical assistanced to invest in solar technology. The city received a two-yead $200,000 cash grant as part of the It also receivesabout $250,000 in technicalo assistance from the Department of Energy, whichu covered the estimated $30,000 cost of the Oregobn Clean Energy Map. Portland will become one of about a dozej of the Solar America cities to use the program to deploy solar map Web sites in a project being led out of the Portlane officeof , the global engineering firm headquartered near Denver that was founded in The idea was spawned a few yeare ago after San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom launched a goal of havin 10,000 San Francisco rooftops adorned with solar photovoltaivc systems by 2010.
San Francisco then contracterd with CH2M Hill to come up witha “The No. 1 thing they needed to do is educate the saidSteph Stoppenhagen, who is leading the solar mappinyg initiative out of CH2M Hill’s office s near Portland State University. San Francisco’z solar map was launched two years ago, with CH2M Hill retaininyg the licensing rights to the program so it coulc offer it toother cities. Using Googlew Map satellite images, CH2M Hill’s system prompts user to type intheir address. The map zooms in and highlightsxtheir rooftop.
A box will pop up detailinvg the roof’s square footage, its estimated photovoltaic the amount of electricity a sola electric systemcould produce, how much electricity woulde be saved per year, and how many pounds of carbob would be spared by employing a system. In a separate box, usersa can get price estimates for varying sizes of residential andcommercialk systems. The Web site will then calculate discountss from incentive and tax credit which in Oregon can account for up to 80 percentt of the cost of a CH2M Hill can add or subtracyt featuresif necessary.
Salt Lake City, for example, is considering a featured that would allow users to judg aesthetic appeal by dragging and dropping pictures of commonly used solarr panels onto the image of their In Sacramento, the company worked with the electri utility on a function that allows users to see how much moneyt they would have saved on previouz electric bills by using a solar photovoltaic system. Portland’as map, for now, will be a basic with dots showing existing photovoltaic and solar thermal installationse while helping users calculate the cost savingsd and benefits of installing solarr ontheir rooftop.
It will also feature a thermometer denotingvthe city’s progress in reaching its goal of hostinbg 5 megawatts of installed solar energy systems by 2012. The city is now at 3.2 Unlike other cities, Portland opted not to call the sitea “Solat Map.” Instead, it chose the name Oregon Clean Energy Map out of the hope that othefr municipal governments might want to work with the city on expandint the map’s territory, which now just covers Portland and Multnomah County.