By Rob Hayes, KABC7 Eyewitness News

A ribbon-cutting was held Tuesday for a unique solar-powered house designed and built by students from two local schools.

Anyone who takes a look at the home’s roof, siding, doors and windows won’t see a hint of green. But the people who designed and built it will point out it is one of the greenest houses to be found – with a monthly power bill of zero.

“And if you are in a municipality where they take energy back, it would be positive. They would actually pay you for the energy,” said Reed Finley, project manager for the Southern California Institute of Architecture and the California Institute of Technology solar decathlon team, which built the home.

It’s called a CHIP solar house. CHIP stands for compact, hyper-insulated prototype.

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Innovative leasing programs are opening new markets for solar panels and new opportunities for generating clean electricity – and at a much lower cost to consumers.

Correspondent Patty Kim visits the Cincinnati Zoo to learn how a new financing model connects solar power investors and manufacturers with people who want to install solar arrays on their homes and businesses to lock in low prices for decades.

WASHINGTON, DC – The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon 2011 concluded this weekend on the National Mall’s West Potomac Park in Washington, D.C. Approximately 4,000 collegiate students from five countries on four continents invested countless hours of time and tireless effort to participate in this prestigious, clean energy competition. In spite of the cloudy and rainy weather during a majority of the contest days, seven out of the 19 highly energy efficient solar-powered houses designed by the student competitors still produced more energy than they consumed. Additionally, student team members led more than 357,000 tours to share the energy-saving features of their houses with the public. In the end, the University of Maryland was crowned the overall winner. At Saturday evening’s Victory Reception, Appalachian State University won the People’s Choice Award for the public’s favorite Solar Decathlon house, a poll in which more than 92,000 votes were cast by visitors, fans and consumers.

The Solar Decathlon is an award-winning competition that challenges collegiate teams from around the world to design, build, and operate solar-powered houses that are affordable, highly energy efficient, attractive, and easy to live in. The 2011 teams and their houses represented a broad range of design solutions, geographic locations and climates, and were targeted toward urban, suburban and rural settings. The houses were intended for different housing markets, including lower-income, disaster relief, retirement, and single family.

“The Solar Decathlon’s impact is threefold,” said Richard King, director of the Solar Decathlon for the U.S. Department of Energy. “Over the last two years, the student competitors have received unique training that prepares them to enter our nation’s clean energy workforce. Visitors and consumers learned firsthand that affordable, energy-efficient features in these innovative houses can help them save money today. And this year’s competition houses will become teaching tools for industry professionals and students around the world.”

The winner of the competition is the team that best blends affordability, consumer appeal, and design excellence with optimal energy production and maximum efficiency. The top three overall finishers of the Solar Decathlon 2011 were the University of Maryland, Purdue University, and New Zealand (Victoria University of Wellington). The complete list of final results and team scores may be found at www.SolarDecathlon.gov.

Thie video by “Solar Trillions” author Tony Seba shows the heliostat field at Gemasolar, the world’s first commercial utility-scale solar power plant.

Each heliostat measures 110 square meters (1,184 square feet) of mirrors that reflect the sunlight onto the receiver on top of the solar power tower.  There are 2,650 heliostats with a total reflective surface of about 300,000 square meters (3.2 million square feet.)

Copyright Tony Seba – All Rights Reserved.

The new solar power field, located next to the Durham facility, will utilize products from GE Energy’s growing portfolio of solar solutions. The field is the first complete Utility Scale Solar Power Plant installed by the company and includes a Brilliance™ Inverter, monitoring and controls, and racking and cabling in addition to more than 9,000 thin film panels that provide the renewable energy. The field will produce 700 KW of power for the Durham facility or enough energy to power 200 homes. The solar power field will also help GE Aviation Durham reduce its CO2 emissions by more than 400 million tons a year, which is the equivalent of removing 77 cars from the road each year.

“The solar power field is one of more than 200 energy reduction projects that GE Aviation Durham has implemented in the last few years,” said Mike Wagner, plant manager of GE Aviation Durham. “These projects have enabled the site to reduce its electricity bill by 30 percent while increasing its production level by 50 percent.”

The solar power field is part of GE’s ecomagination initiative, which includes a commitment by GE to reduce its absolute greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 25 percent, water usage by 25 percent and energy intensity reduction by 50 percent. For more information about GE’s ecomagination, visit: www.ecomagination.com.

GE Aviation, an operating unit of GE (NYSE: GE), is a world-leading provider of jet and turboprop engines, components and integrated systems for commercial, military, business and general aviation aircraft. GE Aviation has a global service network to support these offerings. GE Aviation Durham assembles commercial engines for commercial aircraft. For more information, visit us at www.ge.com/aviation. Follow GE Aviation on Twitter at http://twitter.com/GEAviation and YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/GEAviation