Dell’s Solar Parking Lot
Solar Trees are starting to sprout around the world in a new era of forestation. The latest plantation of these Photovoltaic saplings have been spotted in Texas. Dell, or more exactly, The parking lot of Dell`s headquarters in Texas has seen the growth of a small forest of Solar Panels disguised as shading carports.
Over 500 solar panels have been cultured here to provide shelter for 56 cars for the Dell employees. As these are of the genus “solaritius” they have qualities that are not found in other carports. As an added benefit to mankind these are capable of being harvested of 130,000 kilowatt hours of solar energy each year. This can be used to supply solar powered or hybrid cars in the parking lot.
The carports do not cover the entire lot so there might be some car owners who are left without shade in the summer heat. This might also be a slight ploy by the Dell corporation to encourage employees to arrive early for work and occupy the best spots. According to Dell the solar panels in the carport could reduce the toxic carbon emission to the atmosphere by 145,000 pounds of CO2.
Like many companies around the world, Dell are incorporating solar and other forms of renewable energy in their companies to supplement they or replace some of their energy requirements. The vast majority of power used is still generated by traditional unfriendly methods, such as coal or gas. But whatever we think of those companies, some are at least starting to use solar energy.
The photovoltaic solar trees were built by Envision solar with BP Solar and Coulomb Technologies also playing their parts in the development of this project. Envision Solar had previously equipped Google (some internet search company apparently) with their green solar projects.
When we get down to figures and dollar costs the benefit of this projects may not seem much, but utilizing all those spaces of car parks around the country and incorporating a secondary purpose is removing the need for solar panels to be placed in, sometimes controversial , locations.
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While Envision Solar touts its accomplishment, the true accolades belong to McBride Electric located in Austin (Round Rock) Texas. It was McBride Electric that was the general contractor for Dell Computers and chose to use Envision for the structural design of the “Trees”. They [McBride] utilized other contractors for various portions of the project on various trades. Though there were significant issues involved with the structural steel by Envision that caused McBride to make in-the-field repairs and changes to the assembly, McBride overcame those obstacles and produced a great landmark installation for Dell. This is obviously just the very first of many installation of both covered parking and most likely roof top mounted photovoltaic system that Dell will be installing. The credit belongs to those at the general contractor [McBride Electric] and Dell for an outstanding project. I watched the building of this outside of my window.