Underground Solar? Only in New Jersey

While New Jersey is fast becoming a sunshine state in its own right, second only to California in the number of solar installations, the state is also making itself known as a hotbed of innovation. ABC-7 in Los Angeles is reporting on NJ solar entrepreneur, Ray Saluccio of EarthSure, who has patents pending on a system that collects solar energy from a small roof-mounted disk, which focuses the sun's rays and carries them via fiber-optics to where the sun's energy is collected in an underground solar array. What the system loses in energy on its way underground is reputed to be made up by efficiencies in collection. Plus, the buried panels won't get weathered, knocked down, or blown away in storms. Meanwhile, the small solar focusing module tracks the sun, unlike fixed-panel systems.

The Woodbridge, N.J., entrepreneur, who operates a commercial garbage collection company using automated sweepers, has not yet obtained funding to build a prototype. He says he has received a lot of positive feedback from colleges and others interested in exploring his model and he believes that his new buried energy generators will generate interest among forward-thinking builders and architects.

The SubSolar system (patent pending) would have just a small rooftop presence, employing a solar collection disk that’s about three feet in diameter to capture and magnify the sun’s rays, which would be transferred via fiber optics to the underground storage panels.

Company tests show that the light can be transferred successfully, and while some is lost to diffusion, the Subsolar system can make up for that loss with collection efficiencies. Unlike a flat panel roof solar installation that can only capture a portion of the day’s sunlight (when the angle of the light hitting the panel is right) the Subsolar’s smaller mounted collection disk tracks the sun, collecting rays all day long, Saluccio says.

Furthermore, the underground chambers would keep the panels cool and dry, making them more productive and longer lasting, he says. Rooftop solar panels, by comparison, get baked in the sun and can be harmed by storms.