
NOAA HARNESSES SUN AT SAMOA OBSERVATORY
May 15, 2001 — NOAA has put the sun to work at the baseline observatory in American Samoa. Since the start of May, solar-generated electricity has provided up to 30 percent of the daytime power requirement at the observatory, one of four NOAA-operated monitoring stations around the world. The other three are in Mauna Loa, Hawaii; Barrow, Alaska; and the South Pole, Antarctica. (Click NOAA image for larger view.) "Observatory staff, along with professors and students from American Samoa Community College successfully moved, mounted, and rehabilitated a 1980s solar system on site that had been dormant for about 10 years," said Russ Schnell, group chief for the observatories. "The students helped construct a new carport to support the solar array as a class project." The project began more than a year ago, when Joel Michalski arrived as the new station chief. "There were several people on the island who were interested in the large solar array that was attached to the building," he said. "The array, originally designed to charge a large battery bank, had been damaged and had not been used for almost a decade." The carport was built to provide a stable base for the solar array and to help prevent hurricane damage to the system. Modern DC/AC electronic inverters carry the solar power directly into the observatory's main breaker panel. (Click NOAA image for larger view.) "Not only does the NOAA observatory have a source for renewable solar electric energy, but this also serves as a hands-on laboratory for the community college math and science students to monitor the operation and economics of the system," Michalski said. "The community college is supplying the computers and data logging hardware as well as visiting the site every two weeks while classes are in session. This will be a cooperative outreach between the college and NOAA for as long as the college wants to use the site." (Click NOAA image for larger view.) Funding for the project came from a U.S. Department of Energy Rebuild American Samoa Partnership grant with matching funds from NOAA and the American Samoa Territorial Energy Office. The observatory, which is operated by NOAA's Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., maintains monitoring programs in greenhouse and other trace gases, atmospheric aerosols, and solar radiation variability. It was built in 1973 and began operation in 1975. "The native name for the site where the observatory is located is Matatula Point," said Michalski. "Matatula is translated as ‘where the wind blows' which is very fitting given we measure atmospheric constituents and our most accurate results are when the wind blows from a specific clean air sector. In other words, we take our best measurements from 'where the wind blows'." Relevant Web Sites NOAA's Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory Observatory Operations NOAA Research Media Contact: Jana Goldman, NOAA Research, (301) 713-2483 ext. 181 (Photos courtesy of NOAA's Joel Michalski.) -end-
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