Hawaii
Energy Policy Forum > 2002
Articles
Arizona: Lighting Up The Reservation
Solar Power Catches On Where Sun -- And Not Much Else --
Is Plentiful
Ken Shulman is a regular contributor to Metropolis Magazine.
Editor's Note: This article was originally published by Metropolis
Magazine, and is reprinted with permission.
There are days
when it's easy to see the future as Gregory Kiss sees it
-- especially from the roof of the Temple Bar
Building in Brooklyn Heights, where Kiss + Cathcart Architects
moved in August 2000 after 15 years in Manhattan. From here,
looking north across the East River, the CondÈ Nast
Building at 4 Times Square stands lit by the sun like a stage
actor in the spotlight. The Fox & Fowle-designed skyscraper
features seven floors of photovoltaic panels that Kiss and
his partner Colin Cathcart integrated into the south and
east faces of the tower. Further south, at the tip of Manhattan,
a column of midwinter light plunges onto another Kiss + Cathcart
project, the Whitehall Ferry Terminal. There the architects
have designed a photovoltaic array to be installed across
the terminal's broad waterside facade.
"
It's not enough to tack a few photovoltaic panels onto the
south side of a roof or house and tilt them at a 30-degree
angle toward the sun," says Kiss, shuffling absent-mindedly
between the three copper-domed roof towers that will serve
as anchors for a solar pavilion, display space, and laboratory
the architects hope to build this summer.
"
The generation of electricity is important. But even in this
field, aesthetics are inseparable from function. We have
to begin using this technology not just as an adjunct, and
not just as prototype, but as a structural element. If this
technology is ever to gain broad acceptance, it has to become
part of the general language of design."
As an architect
and partner in the firm he founded with fellow Columbia graduate
Cathcart in 1983, Kiss has used the electricity-generating
panels in projects across the globe: as spandrel windows
in moderate-income housing in the Netherlands; as roof and
sun filter for a Smithsonian Institution research laboratory
in Panama. An unrealized Kiss + Cathcart project involved
draping custom-shaped photovoltaic scales in an elegant reptilian
skin around the crumbling facade of a German utility company.
It may seem ironic, then, in this triumph of high-profile,
high-design work, that Kiss's most substantial and tangible
contribution to sustainable design may well be a series of
simple solar units adjacent to homes on the Navajo reservation
in northern Arizona.
"
The Navajo are the biggest potential market for photovoltaics
in the United States," says Kiss, who four years ago
founded the nonprofit organization Native American Photovoltaics
(NAPV), of which he is president. "
There are an estimated
20,000 homes without electricity there. And with the price
of running power lines currently at $22,000
per mile, they're never going to get it conventionally." Kiss
estimates that the units he and Cathcart developed for NAPV
would sell wholesale, built and installed, for $10,000. But
the costs of living off the grid are even more dramatic for
the Navajo. Lack of daytime current erodes an already low
rate of productivity for their artisans and craftspeople.
Lack of nighttime reading light exacerbates a continuing
illiteracy problem. Elderly couples living in isolated homes
have neither entertainment nor means of summoning help in
a health-care emergency. Because many reservation residents
are unable to store fresh meat, fish, and vegetables, their
diet suffers. The Navajo also have one of the highest rates
of diabetes in the world. "In some ways, it's like the
developing world," Kiss says, "where there are
two billion people without electric current." Previous
attempts to electrify Navajo reservation homes met with spotty
success. Many of these homes still have pollution-producing
diesel generators that require fuel and maintenance, which
can be problematic for homes located 100 miles or more from
the nearest town or trading post. Others are attached to
stalled or damaged solar units that are vestiges of previous
federally funded solar electrification programs on the reservation.
NAPV's nonpolluting units are less offensive to Navajo land
and sensibilities than the power lines that scar the striking
desert landscape."One of the houses where we installed
a photovoltaic unit was hooked up to a block of panels that
had stopped working years ago," says David Silversmith,
project manager at the NAPV office in Dilkon, Arizona. Silversmith
and his workers, all Navajo, have installed photovoltaic
units in 20 Navajo homes. The work and materials in this
initial stage were funded by a grant from the Department
of Energy. "Some contractor from either Phoenix or Albuquerque
set it up, then left and never came back to check on it.
When the wires corroded or the battery failed, the people
in this home couldn't call anybody because they didn't have
a phone."
Constructed out of photovoltaic panels and recycled utility
poles, the individual units generate one kilowatt of current
-- enough to power lights, telephone, a small television,
and a refrigerator. Test families, many of them elderly couples,
pay $50 per month for 10 years toward the purchase of the
units. At the end of the contract they own the solar unit.
The monthly fee also includes regular maintenance, which
is performed, along with construction, installation, and
bill collecting, by Navajo working for NAPV. "We were
warned that some people wouldn't pay," Kiss recalls. "That
we would have to repossess the systems. For that reason we
knew it was essential to work exclusively with local people."
The idea of sustainable solar energy resonates with most
native peoples, whose religions often emphasize harmony with
-- and not dominance over -- the Earth. The Sun is also a
primary actor in Navajo mythology: in the creation story,
the Sun's wife and twin sons save its people from destruction.
NAPV's nonpolluting units are less offensive to Navajo land
and sensibilities than the power lines from coal-fired plants
that crisscross and scar the striking desert landscape. Structured
like a simple pavilion, or Spanish ramada, they also serve
as a shelter from the sun. "They look like pieces of
sculpture," Silversmith says. "Other systems I've
seen out here are built on concrete slabs with metal frames
and a chain-link fence around them. NAPV respects the landscape
and the lifestyles of our people. In one of our families,
the woman, a weaver, has moved her loom beneath the ramada
to take advantage of the shade. Another family parks its
car beneath it. You can't imagine how valuable shade is in
the desert."
With the first phase of the NAPV project
completed -- and the initial Department of Energy grant spent
-- Kiss is drafting
two business plans to continue electrifying Navajo homes.
The first plan involves additional grants and would function
as phase one did, in blocks of 20 or 30 systems. The second
plan would enlist a down payment of $1,000 to $2,000 from
20,000 possible Navajo subscribers and 10 years of $150 monthly
payments -- from people whose average annual income is $6,000.
If there are enough subscribers, the plan could finance not
only the individual ramadas but also the construction of
a solar-panel factory on reservation land employing Navajo,
50 percent of whom are currently without work. "I know
I could make this work, with or without the grants," Kiss
says. "And what better location for a solar-panel factory
than a sunlit desert with a natural market for this technology?"
Although
it might have been predicted that the Arizona desert would
prove more receptive to sun-powered technology than
the once Indian-inhabited island of Manhattan, it is ironic
that the Navajo tradesmen were usually able to get their
solar units working within two days, whereas the six-floor
photovoltaic solar array Kiss + Cathcart designed for the
CondÈ Nast building lay dormant for nearly a year
after it was installed before it too was producing electricity. "A
part of this was a sort of benign neglect," Kiss admits. "But
a part was a conscious decision I'd made. We were consultants
on the project. We did our part, and then went on to other
things. I wanted to see if after our efforts the builder
could take care of the installation on his own. It fell through
the cracks, though, and in the end I saw I'd have to take
care of it."
Sustainable architecture -- including the
building-integrated photovoltaics that are Kiss + Cathcart's
specialty -- is
more broadly accepted today than even a decade ago. The partnership
receives increasingly frequent invitations to consult from
some of the largest architectural and industrial firms in
the country. But for every successful photovoltaic project
included in Kiss + Cathcart's PowerPoint presentation, there
are at least two equally ambitious and original designs that
will never see construction. One of these is the HEW center,
in Hamburg, a project that took first prize in the 1996 American
Institute of Architects Building-Integrated PV Competition,
as well as top honors in the 1996-97 Photovoltaics in Buildings
competition, sponsored by Germany's federal Ministry for
Education, Science, and Technology and the German Association
of Architects. The project, Kiss claims, fell victim to political
infighting following the election of Gerhard Schroeder as
German chancellor in September 1998. Another notable casualty
was the competition for a large solar roof for a parking
structure in upstate New York that the firm won in 1992.
Bringing solar power into mainstream construction appears
to be a bit more problematic for Kiss + Cathcart than lighting
up the rez.
"
I'm glad our specific expertise is getting us a lot of work," exclaims
Kiss, ducking into the rooftop tower and heading down the
stairs toward his firm's offices. "But what I would
really like is for this technology to be treated like any
other building material -- and to see the day when any architecture
that isn't sustainable will simply be considered bad architecture.
What I would really like is for our job to become obsolete."
|
