Edison, Air Agency Will Plug Solar Carport : Environment: The device will use rooftop photovoltaic solar panels to recharge cars or to feed excess electricity into power lines.

The solar carport today joins a profusion of vehicles, furniture finishes and barbecue lighters being dreamed up as part of the grand campaign for cleaner air in Southern California.

The device--which will use rooftop photovoltaic solar panels to recharge cars or to feed excess electricity into a utility’s power lines--will be announced this morning by Southern California Edison and the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

“In combining environmentally clean solar energy with non-polluting electric vehicles, we have the best of both worlds,” said Geoff Bales, Edison’s manager of research, in a statement.

Edison plans to build a 3,000-square-foot prototype of the carport at the AQMD’s headquarters in Diamond Bar. Data from this first facility will be available for businesses and other public use as electric vehicles become more common, the utility company said. Edison estimates that 200,000 electric cars and trucks will be in use in Southern California by the year 2000.

The utility itself has joined with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to make available 10,000 electric vehicles to Southern California by 1995.

Edison also hopes by the mid-1990s to market a new, low-cost “solar sandpaper” photovoltaic material, which is now being developed jointly with Texas Instruments. This could be used on a solar carport.

Proponents see the idea as particularly appropriate for business parking facilities and shopping malls, where drivers could recharge their electric cars while they work or shop.

The prototype, which will have the capacity to produce about 24 kilowatts of electricity, will be engineered and built by Irvine based-Fluor Daniel Inc. using photovoltaic equipment manufactured by Solarex Corp, based in Rockville, Maryland, and Northern Power Systems of Moratown, Vermont.