Apr 15 2009
Evergreen Solar, Inc. (Nasdaq: ESLR), a manufacturer of STRING RIBBON solar power products with its proprietary, low-cost silicon wafer manufacturing technology, announced today that its panels are being used to provide the electricity for a new electric vehicle battery recharging station in a high-traffic area in Frankfurt, Germany.
Electric vehicle recharging station (Photo: Business Wire)
The solar "fuel" station provides free battery charging for small-scale electric vehicles including Velotaxis, Segways, electric bikes and scooters.
The station contains six charging ports all of which receive their power from the Evergreen Solar panels located on the building's roof. The installation is located in a major shopping district allowing people to power their vehicles while they shop. On a hot sunny, summer day the station will produce approximately 21 kWh of electricity and enough annually to power 115,000 kilometers of travel for the average e-scooter. The cost of the installation was €65,000 and was shared by the project's partners Ralos GmbH, Mainova AG, traffiQ GmbH, Umweltforum Rhein Main e.V., Frankfurter Sparkasse, Velotaxi M. Graf, Rossel-Display GmbH & Co. KG and the Goethe Gymnasium, a high school in Frankfurt.
"This new solar 'fuel' station will serve as a model for the transportation industry and is a major step forward in helping promote environmentally-friendly transportation," said Peter Rusch, Evergreen Solar's director of marketing and sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. "As a company that produces solar panels delivering the most electricity with the smallest carbon footprint, we feel a project like this one is very much in line with our brand and our overall mission."
The charging station became fully operational on March 31, 2009. It is open to the public from 9:00 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday through Friday, and from 9:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Saturday.