We know that people who visit our website like photos. They like photos a lot. Galleries of solar installations that we’ve done are some of the most popular pages on our website, year round.
For example, people really seem to love our shots of solar panels at homes around Virginia, from Blacksburg and Roanoke to Lynchburg and Charlottesville, some in stunning mountain landscapes. Check out our Home Solar Photo Gallery here.
We always look for ways to share more solar photos with our audiences, to help spread the truth that solar is not just powerful, but it’s also beautiful.
So, when we learned that the Department of Energy had just released their own galleries of hundreds of gorgeous shots of solar panels, we wanted to share them with our web visitors.
In response to complaints from solar industry leaders around the country that too many of the stock photos used by solar companies were ugly or didn’t represent the industry accurately, this year the federal agency organized a contest for photos of solar panels called “Hit Me With Your SunShot.”
The contest ran from for a month through August 17, 2017, and winners were announced only a few days later. Each photo submitted gave its owner the chance to win prizes from a total of $2,500 in cash, up to $500 for the grand prize. All submissions were judged by Simon Edelman, Chief Creative Officer for the Department of Energy, and Dennis Schroeder, a photographer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado who is a solar photography expert.
The photos were posted to the flickr page maintained by the Department of Energy, where the shots are available for anyone to use free of charge under a Creative Commons license.
Here’s the Grand Prize-winning image from the contest:
According to the Energy Department’s website, this shot represents: “Massive heliostats at sunrise at the Crescent Dunes concentrating solar power plant in Tonopah, Nevada. The 110 megawatt plant uses heliostats to reflect sunlight onto a receiver when the sun is shining. The resulting energy that’s generated can be stored for use 24 hours a day to power 75,000 homes. The heliostats are pictured here stowed in a horizontal position overnight. Photo by Ivan Boden.”
Here are winners in the other categories:
These photos show both the beauty of solar panels but also the variety of places that solar panels can be installed. Solar is not just America’s fastest growing energy source. It may also be our most flexible source of power, giving people energy independence no matter where they are.
If you’d like to view more shots, check out the “Hit Me with Your SunShot” gallery on flickr.
These photos show that solar panels can be a work of art. And if you’d like to see if your house is ready to host your own solar work of art, then just request a free solar quote from Main Street Solar. We’ll come by and see what it would take to help you go solar at a price that’s surprisingly affordable.
— Andrew Brenner, Main Street Solar
