FedEx Express has announced plans to install its largest rooftop solar system at a distribution hub at the Newark Liberty International Airport after several years of planning with the Port Authority of NY & NJ, Marina Energy, Solops and Ray Angelini, Inc.. When completed, the system will generate about 2.4 million kWh a year and could provide more than 15 percent of the hub’s energy needs, the company says. The three-building, 3.5-acre project will prevent about 1,807 metric tons of CO2 emissions annually and will be the airport’s first solar project.
Epic Systems, a developer of software for the health care sector and Wisconsin’s largest solar power producer, has said it will build six utility-scale wind turbines at its campus in Verona, the Journal Sentinel reports. Earlier this year, Epic completed a 2.2 MW solar installation at the campus. The wind and solar energy, combined with a geothermal system that provides heating and hot water for its campus buildings, will help Epic supply 85 percent of its own energy needs by 2014, the company’s facilities director Bruce Richards told the Wisconsin State Journal.
The Pearl Harbor Survivors Association and other veterans are protesting the Navy’s plans to build a solar farm at the Pearl Harbor site in Honolulu, Hawaii, the Los Angeles Times reports. The planned 60,000-PV panel project would help the Navy meet the US military’s goal of supplying 50 percent of all bases’ energy with renewables by 2020, and would lower electricity costs at the Pearl Harbor facilities by about $1.5 million in the first year alone.
Organic restaurant La Sal Varador (pictured) on the beach of Mataró in Barcelona has achieved grid parity with a Conergy rooftop solar installation, according to the solar company. The 8 kW pilot project, installed over the summer, is the first Conergy plant in Spain that will be competitive without any subsidies, combining the restaurant’s consumption with connection to the grid. The restaurant expects to use about 95 percent of the 10,700 kWh of solar energy generated. Electricity from the rooftop installation is up to 30 percent cheaper than electricity from the grid, Conergy says.
