De Anza college students will be facing more inconvenience on campus as construction continues throughout the year. Construction of a new Photovoltaic system over a large portion of parking lots A and B will temporarily reduce the number of student parking spaces during the coming months.  Students may face higher levels of traffic and greater difficulty parking their vehicle while the closure is in effect.

Construction of the PV system is scheduled to begin on June 20 and is estimated to be completed by Nov. 15.  It has not been determined how long or how much of the parking lots will be closed as the project is underway.

While the installation of the PV system may be a benefit for De Anza College, it has the potential to be a bust for the De Anza Autocross. This race is hosted by the Auto Tech club and is held every year. With its track spanning parking lots A and B, the Autocross may find itself without a track upon completion of the planned PV system.

Adviser to the Auto Tech club, Michael Brandt, had the opportunity to attend several planning meetings with Gilbane, Inc., the company managing the installation of the PV project.  He presented a map of the parking lot and race course for Gilbane, Inc. to consider while planning the final position of the PV project.

“In January, [Gilbane] showed me what they had done,” Brandt said.  “They had tried to put the support columns of the solar panel array in such a position that would hopefully allow us to continue with the Autocross. We’ll have to wait until [the array] is assembled to know if we can run our event safely.”  

Brandt listed concerns if the Autocross were to continue around the new steel structure.  Cars going around turns tend to drift to the outside of the turn, he said, so having more steel poles around the area would be hazardous.  Also, for a driver on the course, the transition of driving in the daylight to driving in the shade of the structure may be distracting. The noise of driving under the structure has the potential to be a problem as well.

Despite the parking lot closures and interference with the De Anza Autocross, the PV project will give a financial boost to De Anza College.  The array is expected to produce 2.3 megawatt/hours of electricity per year.  It will be a single axis tracking system design, which tracks the sun’s movement across the sky and adjusts the position of the solar panels accordingly for maximum efficiency and electricity production.  SunPower, a company which produces and installs solar panels, has been contracted to handle the construction of the project.

You can find a map of the PV project’s planned location at http://www.deanza.edu/measurec/pdf/MapDASummer2011Construction.pdf.