California Completes Its Largest Solar Installation Yet

If you’ve ever flown into LAX on a clear day, you have seen the miles of industrial buildings that stretch out into the desert. Edison International has seen it too, and has taken advantage of one of those empty rooftops to install the largest solar panel installation in the state.

Mounted on the roof of a distribution center owned by Prologis in Fontana, 50 miles east of LA, the 600,000 square feet of panels will produce about 2 megawatts, enough electricity to power up to 1,300 homes. The thin-film panels were installed by First Solar. Even better, this is only the first of about 150 similar projects planned for factory and warehouse roofs in SoCal.

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The total plan will cost $875 million, and will provide 250 million watts of capacity – enough to power over 160,000 homes. It will take two square miles of rooftops to achieve. The utility does qualify for the 30 percent investment tax credit passed by the government as part of the $700 billion financial rescue plan. The next project will be a warehouse roof in Chino.

In addition to pushing California forward towards its goal of receiving 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources, Schwarzenegger also touted the jobs created by such projects. If anything is going to lead us out of this (now official) recession, it should be green jobs like these.

Photo credit: Tigg07 on Flickr through a Creative Commons license

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