Page 27 - North American Clean Energy September October 2015

features easily, such as mounting devices Circuit-level energy intelligence
or stifening ribs.
Curb, an advanced real-time home and solar monitoring system, tracks solar energy production and all devices using electricity in the

home, providing insights to make smarter decisions about power consumption. Curb’s 18 circuit-level current sensors (CT clamps)
Sustainability a growing provide total home consumption, grid vs solar production comparisons, and breaker-level energy usage details. he accompanying
factor: aluminum is highly software suite enables users to view second-by-second energy data from any mobile device. An integrated alerting system provides
recyclable
actionable notiications when there is an opportunity save, and a web dashboard enables the identiication of energy trends. Weekly

hroughout the industry, the use of sus- emails report power usage and provide speciic suggestions tailored to the home to help cut costs and conserve power the following
tainable resources is gaining importance week. Curb’s integration into the Smarthings platform even enables remote control of devices directly from the Curb app.
to help conserve inite resources and pro- EnergyCurb | www.energycurb.com

tect the environment. he recycling value
of aluminum vs. steel becomes apparent
with ground mounting systems for solar
projects. Based on scrap values for each

material provided by U.S. Geological
Surveys, an aluminum structure when
decommissioned is worth roughly three
times that of steel.

No longer can developers disregard
long-term costs of a project, including
the total installed cost over the lifetime
of a project. he Aluminum Association

contends that recycled aluminum pays
for its own cost of collection and then
some when compared to steel. Recycling
aluminum is also much more energy

eicient than recycling steel, requiring
only 5% of the energy needed to make
new aluminum. And aluminum can be
recycled repeatedly without degrading.

By one estimate, 3/4 of all aluminum
ever produced is still in use in products
today – making it an ideal material for
renewable-energy applications.

Speed to market Is another
beneit of aluminum
he tool up for producing aluminum ex-

trusions for mounting systems is quick,
usually requiring only a matter of a few
weeks for tool creation, and another few
weeks for production once the producer

is tapped. Tooling costs are relatively
low for such extrusions, typically a small
percentage of a common stamping die or

roll-formed tooling.
his proves important when engineers
can spend up to a year in planning a
major commercial solar installation, but

the mounting systems are considered at
the last minute. With aluminum extru-
sions for residential projects, solar panel
installers don’t need to do much cus-

tomization. he mounting pieces are pro-
duced in standard lengths, and installers
typically don’t require any job site modi-
ications. All hardware for mounting to

the roof and connecting solar panels to
the rails are attached through the inte-
grated features extruded into the rails
and or module frames.

When considering life-cycle econom-
ics, independent studies continue to
show that aluminum is a more economi-
cal alternative to steel in the production

of solar power structural components.

Jason Weber is director of business
development for industrial products for

Sapa Extrusions.

Sapa Extrusions | www.sapagroup.com

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North American Clean Energy