Abstract

The San Diego region has been allocated financing opportunities for 192 solar installation projects, which will promote hundreds of new green jobs and increase locally produced solar energy by more than 40 percent (or 20 megawatts). The $154 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Clean Renewable Energy Bonds (CREBs) allocations for the San Diego region went to San Diego municipalities, school districts, universities, and a water district. Four students UC San Diego Mechanical and Environmental Engineering Students were critical enablers of the success while taking an engineering course on solar power from Professor Jan Kleissl. The analytical tool created by the students made it possible for the San Diego partners to perform engineering and economic analyses of cost, solar energy output, and payback time of solar PV arrays. With the help of the students’ sophisticated yet easy-to-use spreadsheets, the San Diego agencies were able to churn out applications at a rate of 4 per hour (or $3.2M per hour), a process which would usually take a few days. With the students’ support, the San Diego Unified School District alone won allocations for 111 projects totaling $74 million, which is the largest total allocation amount for a single public agency nationwide and nearly twice that of largest non-California state winner (New Jersey) for total allocations going to public agencies in one state.

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