News Article
SolarWorld Shows Off 1 MW Of Solar Projects
SolarWorld, the largest U.S. solar manufacturer, has undertaken three on-campus projects to showcase and tap the high-performance solar technology that it manufactures at its U.S. headquarters in Hillsboro, Ore., beginning with raw polysilicon chunks and ending with finished solar panels.
This month, SolarWorld initiated a project to install nearly 1 megawatt of high-performance solar panels atop a 210,000-square-foot secondary manufacturing facility that the company built in 2009. Last fall, SolarWorld completed a 30-kilowatt solar-covered carport using its proprietary canopy support structure above the site's visitor parking lot as well as a solar demonstration park featuring four model rooftops exhibiting a variety of installation technologies.
"Our Hillsboro plant has grown to encompass all phases of the solar product life cycle: manufacturing, installation and power generation," said Gordon Brinser, president of SolarWorld Industries America Inc., based in Hillsboro. "The feat is the ultimate demonstration of the proximity advantages of high-standard domestic operations."
When the company completes its 1 MW rooftop installation in early 2012, it is expected to generate 1,200 megawatt hours of renewable solar electricity a year, enough to power 200 typical American households.
SolarWorld sells panels manufactured in Hillsboro into an ever-growing customer bases in the United States, Canada and Latin America. The new projects give customers a venue to observe SolarWorld products at work using a variety of mounting technologies. The demonstration park will serve as a hands-on classroom to train customers in best practices for mounting and wiring SolarWorld panels. It features three 150-square-foot, pitched roofs, each topped with a different SolarWorld product. It also includes a flat roof demonstrating ballasted and non-ballasted installations and a free-field system featuring SolarWorld's Sunfix ground-mount racking product.
Near the demonstration park, the solar carport, featuring 130 SolarWorld solar panels, provides weather protection for 14 cars. Canopies are multi-benefit installations familiar in the California market, but less often seen in other regions; a 1.56-megawatt canopy project featuring SolarWorld solar panels over much of the expansive visitor parking lot of the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, for instance, went into service last spring. The SolarWorld headquarters canopy also features an electric vehicle charging station.
