On September 23, 2013, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer issued a proclamation designating October as Solar and Renewable Energy Month.
The proclamation is in recognition of the American Solar Energy Society’s annual National Solar Tour of solar installations and energy sustainable buildings.
The event is conducted throughout Arizona, with a lecture and local tours happening on different weekends in different parts of the state. The tours provide the public with an opportunity to see the latest solar and green building technologies, techniques and strategies.
The Arizona component of the tour kicks off in Flagstaff on October 12 at the Willow Bend Environmental Education Center. The self-guided Flagstaff tour is a joint effort of the Coconino County Sustainable Building Program, the City of Flagstaff Sustainability Program, the northern Arizona branch of the United States Green Building Council, and the Willow Bend Environmental Education Center. The tour of local Flagstaff buildings showcases sustainable and innovative approaches at home and in the community.
Tours continue throughout the month with the self-guided Living With The Sun tour in the Phoenix metropolitan area the weekend of October 26 -27. An open house in Pine on November 2 and a Tucson tour the weekend of November 10 -11 will conclude a month of statewide activities.
The national tours go back to 1995, and Arizona has conducted tours for as many years; in fact, Arizonans have been showcasing solar advances dating back to the 1950s.
Few remember the first big solar gathering in Phoenix as part of the 1955 Association for Applied Solar Energy’s World Conference and Great Exposition. The “Great Exposition” in downtown Phoenix displayed an array of solar energy equipment, from concentrating solar thermal to the introduction of Bell Laboratories' first silicon solar cell.
Many years later on May 3, 1978, solar advocates again celebrated the advances in solar energy with a fair at Encanto Park. That solar fair was part of Sun Day, the solar energy equivalent of Earth Day. Arizona celebrated Sun Day that year with demonstrations of homemade solar ovens, homemade solar water heaters, and attached solar greenhouses. Solar electricity at the time was a space-age technology, and the cost for completely supplying a home with solar electricity approached a million dollars.
Solar energy had gone from a scientific curiosity in 1955 to a backyard do-it-yourself industry in 1978.
The 2013 tours highlight today’s solar energy and the state-of-the-art in sustainable design. The tours recognize that solar is more than just equipment: it also includes passive solar strategies and techniques, material choices, textures, colors, and much more.
Unfortunately, media coverage of solar has morphed over the years into a narrow focus on equipment, such as photovoltaics and solar water heaters. When most people think about solar energy, they think about power generation and distribution with little attention to the other aspects of solar. Perhaps this is a result of the transition from curiosity, to backyard industry, and finally to mainstream--but nevertheless, this narrow definition ignores much that is solar.
For at least one month, though, all facets of solar are reconnected in tours. The tours feature homes and buildings that include adobe and straw bale construction, solar water heaters, insulated concrete forms, rainwater/greywater reuse, xeriscaping gardens, passive solar design, solar electric, and more.
Over the next month Arizonans will open their homes and buildings to help educate their neighbors not only about the ever-evolving solar technologies – but also to remind us all how design techniques can be tailored to the local climate and environment to give rise to sustainable buildings.
Jim Arwood
Communications Director
Arizona Solar Center
Question for comment below: Examples of sustainable building designs are all around us. We encourage our readers to share some of the innovative techniques and strategies that you have seen incorporated into Arizona homes and buildings. What passive solar techniques are the most common in Arizona?
(Note: Check back over the next couple of weeks as we update our event schedule to include more details on the Arizona tours. In addition to tours, the Arizona Solar Center is sponsoring a “Solar and Sustainability” public lecture session on October 17 in Scottsdale.)
