CVTC's new solar tree on a less than sunny day.

A few weeks ago, Chippewa Valley Technical College got a bit more green by planting a black, metallic tree.

Over the last year, the college worked with local renewable energy systems installer Next Step Energy to create their first "solar tree," which provides up to 180w of energy on a sunny day. It helps to power the greenhouse shown above.

The coolest part of this, though — beyond the fact that it's also a sculpture resembling a tree — is that the energy coming in is trackable (in real time) via a sweet website. Here you can see the current production, charts of the last week or month or year, and even a conversion to how many lightbulbs have been powered.

The tree was designed by Next Step Energy's Joe Maurer (an Eau Claire-based artist) who explains, "The project started with CVTC wanting to have a solar system that wasn’t just a solar array. It’s sculptural and it’s an educational array."

The tree is actually engineered to hold up to three solar panels, meaning production could go up to 540w in the future. Maurer says Next Step "hopes for a ‘forest’ of these in some form, though we don’t have a client for that at the moment."

It was crafted by Minneapolis metalsmith Chris Rand. Check out a video showing some of that process:

More photos:

 

Scale diagram.

 

Installation.

 

From behind.