If small businesses like car washes can do solar why can’t the larger companies?
A new car wash opened close to our house in Superior CO called ‘PureClean Auto Spa’ that has solar panels on the roof. This was very cool because we never had a car wash so close before. So I had to stop and take a few pictures of the solar installation.
I went to their web site and found the following:
- photo-voltaic solar cells on our roof to capture the sun’s energy and convert it to electricity
- extremely efficient (99%) boilers to heat our water and snow melt systems, thereby decreasing our demand for natural gas, while reducing our carbon footprint
- water reclaim system that cleans and recycles a key limited natural resource.
- environmentally safe detergents that clean like crazy, but won’t pollute our water supply
- recycle trash bins will be located to conveniently help our customers to do their part to reduce waste at landfills
I was kind of surprised that it was not part of a national chain of car washes (it has that professional appearance), it appears to be own by a Michael Campbell. I will drop him an email to find out more about the solar panel installation and report back.
When I saw the panels at first I thought it was a good idea to have solar thermal panels heat up the car wash water in the winter to prevent freezing, but as I got closer I noticed that the panels were PV. I guess car washes use more electricity to run the pumps than I thought.
Update 11/20/09: I got the following from Denise Celentano:
Saw your article on Michael Campbells carwash, and thought I would forward our press release to you. OFFICIALLY, by the blessings of Sulphur Springs Valley Electric Cooperative, Inc on November 19, 2009 Sweet Sunset LLC, dba, Super Suds Carwash @ 1030 W. 4th St., Benson, AZ is running 100% on Solar. We run approximately 10 hours a day on solar which feeds into the grid and produces more than we need during the day, then at night (or dark cloudy day skies)- given we are a 24/7 carwash, we use electricity from the grid. Since we have been operating for a week prior to the approval, we have saved 2184 pounds of CO2 gas going into the atmosphere, and have generated 1584 KW of power. At this point, we have used >5% electricity from the grid. (We had to turn it off for inspection twice in the week) Thru ONLY “google” search, and talking to distributors in Tucson, we have not found any other carwash to be running 100% on Solar in AZ. For further information please contact Terry Celentano.
car wash solar panel? its the first i have read something like this, and i think it’s a great idea! hopefully, some car wash businesses or other businesses as well will adapt solar panels.