Leveraging the exceptional solar resources already in existence in Colorado, the development site, Solar Technology Acceleration Center (SolarTAC), will be located in Aurora, Colo.

The entities involved in SolarTAC include: Abengoa Solar, the City of Aurora, the Colorado Renewable Energy Collaboratory, Midwest Research Institute (MRI), SunEdison and Xcel Energy.

"We are pleased that conceptual discussions we initiated several years ago have now become reality with the tremendous help of all our SolarTAC partners," said Dick Kelly, chairman, president and CEO, Xcel Energy.

"SolarTAC will help bring advanced, more efficient and lower cost solar technologies to market and advance our vision of a clean energy future for our customers and local communities."

SolarTAC will provide a solar facility where member companies can bring their technologies for testing and demonstration, particularly solar technologies at the early commercial or near-commercial stage of development.

SolarTAC will also help promote better interface between technology developers and solar energy users by offering solar equipment suppliers an opportunity to show potential customers new technologies performing under actual field conditions. MRI will serve as the management and operating contractor for SolarTAC.

"Site design, engineering, and permitting for the new 74-acre SolarTAC site in Aurora has begun," said James L. Spigarelli, president and CEO of MRI.

"As renewable energy continues to play an ever-increasing role in solving the world's energy challenges, large-scale test facilities will play a significant role in helping companies test the readiness of new solar technologies for deployment in the marketplace. We are very pleased that Abengoa Solar, SunEdison and Xcel Energy have signed on as founding member companies of the first shared solar technology center of its kind in North America."

Spigarelli added, "Aurora Mayor Ed Tauer and his economic development team are also to be commended for their diligent efforts in making this land available for our new not-for-profit business concept in solar test facilities."

"SolarTAC will be the best site in the country for the proving of new technology. This campus is targeted at directly boosting the members' bottom line," said Mayor Tauer. "We believe that other companies will also see the advantages they can gain by working with the SolarTAC members on this site."

In addition to the three founding member companies, MRI, who is one of two entities in the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC, that manages the U. S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colo., plans to recruit about a dozen other companies to participate as founding members in SolarTAC.

"Our objective is to provide a highly flexible, real world test situation with dedicated, custom test sites for leading-edge companies," said Mike Pacheco, MRI vice president and acting executive director for SolarTAC.

"We look forward to building a base of companies that have synergies with each other and will collaborate to test, validate, and demonstrate new technologies and fully integrated commercial-ready systems leading to deployment into the marketplace more efficiently and effectively."

The SolarTAC business concept allows members to sponsor a wide range of research projects, from research that is completely proprietary to research that is shared between members to research that is available to the public.

SolarTAC will also be open to research sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and by national labs like the National Renewable Energy Laboratory located in Golden.

The members of SolarTAC have all agreed to partner with the State of Colorado and the four major research institutions that make up the Colorado Renewable Energy Collaboratory - Colorado State University, Colorado School of Mines, University of Colorado - Boulder (CU), and NREL.

As part of the partnership, the Collaboratory institutions will be invited to participate in planning SolarTAC activities and respond to Requests for Research Proposals. Colorado's universities and NREL will be engaged to complement the applied testing and demonstration work in Aurora with more fundamental scientific research at each of the four institutions.

"This is just one more important step forward in positioning Colorado as a world leader in renewable energy technology development," said David Hiller, executive director of the Collaboratory.

In the initial phase, SolarTac's 74-acre site, scheduled to be developed over the next three years, will include common areas to be used for performance validation testing of new solar energy system components for which the costs and results will be shared by all SolarTAC companies, as well as custom-made, company-specific test sites for proprietary testing by member companies.

Abengoa Solar will have one of the first buildings erected on the site, an assembly building, and will begin actual equipment testing on proprietary components for their Concentrated Solar Power system components within a few months.

SunEdison will begin developing a portion of the site for testing new photovoltaic system components early next year, and Xcel Energy will be permanently locating the Award Winning CU Solar Decathlon exhibit to the site to serve as a visitors' center and solar exhibit. This zero-energy structure was designed and constructed by students at CU-Boulder in 2007.

MRI will manage the engineering design and construction effort for the site and its facilities and has hired Burns and McDonnell, an international engineering and architecture firm based in Kansas City, to develop site plans and designs, and ICM-Pueblo, a construction management firm in Pueblo, Colo., to manage construction of the site.

Related Links
Abengoa Solar
Midwest Research Institute
All About Solar Energy at SolarDaily.com

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