Friday, September 25, 2009 at 9:02:26 AM - by Nate Lew

On September 18, The U.S. Department of Transportation, or USDOT, announced $100 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, 2009) funding to be distributed to 43 regional and local transit agencies across the nation.

The $100 million, awarded for “clean transport” initiatives like solar energy, represents about .14 percent of the total $787 billion allocated under ARRA this year. The biggest winners were Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Antonio, Oakland, and the state of Connecticut, each of which won more than $4 million to upgrade public transportation infrastructure.

The grants, called TIGGER grants (Transit Investments for Greenhouse Gas and Energy Reduction), are a $1.5-billion package for public transportation. Of course, not all grants will go to solar energy, but some of the biggest ones will, and the biggest is Atlanta, where the state’s transit authority will use $10.8 million to install Georgia’s biggest solar panel array.

Atlanta's metro transit authority, known as MARTA (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) will use the money to put solar photovoltaic panels on the roofs of 220 stalls at its Laredo bus maintenance facility in Decatur, about six miles northeast of Atlanta.

The panels will produce electricity for MARTA, and any electricity that isn’t used will be sold back Atlanta-based Georgia Power Co., a subsidiary of Southern Company.

Another big winner is Oakland’s AC Transit, where $6.4 million will go toward installing solar photovoltaic panels to generate hydrogen at its Central Maintenance Facility in Hayward on East 14th Street near the Oakland border with San Leandro. Combined with existing solar capacity, this newest installation will allow AC Transit to produce the electricity equivalent of 180 kilograms per day of hydrogen to power its fleet of 12 hydrogen fuel-cell, zero-emission buses.

A final runner-up is the North (San Diego) County Transit District, or NCTD, where $2 million will potentially go toward installing solar photovoltaic panels on some of the NCTD’s facilities. At least, that was the plan when the request was for $6 million. Now, according to Tom Kelleher, NCTD spokesman, the district will have to evaluate proposals on a case-by-case basis.

Santa Clarita, smaller than San Diego, will surprisingly receive $4.6 million to install solar photovoltaic panels on the roofs of two canopies at the Transit Maintenance Facility (TMF) where inter-city and commuter buses are stored, providing both solar electricity and shade.

Santa Clarita, 30 miles north of downtown Los Angeles, will use the solar electricity generated to offset up to 95 percent of the electric power it currently buys from regional utility South California Edison. Additional solar panels will also be put on top of carports at TMF headquarters to provide electricity and shade. The energy produced by the solar arrays will cover approximately 52 percent of the agency’s total electric usage.