Lights go out on solar plan Lights go out on solar plan (October 28, 2005)

NASA's idea to save Hangar One falls through after single bid proves untenable

By Jon Wiener

Solar power won't save Hangar One. Whether something else will remains to be seen.

Last week, NASA quietly abandoned its plan to replace the Moffett Field landmark's contaminated siding with power- and money-generating solar panels.

The agency received a bid from only one of the five companies that had toured the facility in early September. NASA environmental chief Sandy Olliges said the installation proposed by San Diego-based Sempra Energy would not have helped to rebuild the 200-foot-tall structure.

"I thought the majority of people would have liked to have seen it work," said Olliges of the solar idea. "So," she said with a sigh and a pause, "we tried."

Sempra Energy proposed to build a 2-megawatt solar array on a parking garage that has yet to be built, not what NASA was looking for this summer when it launched a campaign to promote the idea of using solar power to save the hangar. NASA employees working on the project were hoping to take advantage of new products that can double as both photovoltaic panels and building materials.

But solar engineers and others said the economic problems of using a structure with steep walls and little southern exposure for a solar demonstration project would probably outweigh any community excitement about the idea. More significantly, NASA's proposal would have required solar companies to find their own sources of funding.

"We just couldn't stir up enough interest on the developer funding side," said Joe Morrissey, vice president of sales for Atlantis Energy Systems, maker of solar panels that double as building materials. He called NASA's proposal "the equivalent of a Hail Mary."

NASA had asked that projects produce at least 2 megawatts of power. At production costs of $8 to $10 a watt, that would have required more than $15 million in outside funding -- only a portion of which could have been recovered through sale of the electricity.

Olliges said NASA may still explore putting solar panels on the hangar's roof in the future, but right now no one can guarantee that there will even be a hangar in the future. The Navy is responsible for removing the contamination by any means necessary, including demolition. And though its lawyers determined two weeks ago that it could spend federal clean-up funds on restoring the structure, officials have yet to commit to doing that.

E-mail Jon Wiener at jwiener@mv-voice.com

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