One very damn smart company

[Scuba]

Note that this use of solar is not in the desert, but in Wisconsin.



http://www.solaripedia.com/13/364/epic_systems_installs_epic_solar_(wisconsin).html

Epic Systems is a provider of health care software whose facilities director believes it’s more cost-effective to build a big renewable energy project than to come back later and expand it. So, by the end of 2011, the largest solar project yet built in Wisconsin is taking shape on Epic’s corporate campus in Verona, Wisconsin. And by the middle of next year, the new solar "farm" is expected to double in size again. As of June 2011, about 1,300 solar panels have been installed on a space-frame structure above a parking lot. The remaining parking spaces are underground, covered with vegetation. It is just one part of Epic’s plans to wean itself off fossil fuels. Most buildings on the campus are heated and cooled with a ground-source heat pump system, eliminating the need for natural gas for heating and electricity for cooling. The company is also considering construction of two utility-scale wind turbines that would generate up to three megawatts of electricity, as well as a biomass-to-energy project that would convert Epic’s food waste and landscaping trimmings into energy.

http://host.madison.com/business/epic-systems-plans-to-add-more-solar-panels/article_ec06c820-783d-11e0-b78c-001cc4c03286.html

py of nearly 1,300 solar panels over the exposed deck of one of two parking ramps at its Verona campus.

With a maximum capacity of 280 watts per panel, they can produce as much as 443,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity a year, said Bruce Richards, Epic's director of facilities. "That's like 40 homes worth of energy," he said.

When the sun shines, solar power supplies up to 5 percent of the electricity used by the health care software development company's 4,300 employees.

But it's just the beginning. While the new panels were powered up in late April, Epic started work this week on a much bigger solar spread. It will encompass about 18 acres, just west of its office campus, near Country View Road, on an alfalfa field Epic owns.

The 7,500 panels will produce up to 2.2 megawatts of power on a sunny day, or about seven times as much as the current solar units. They will be mounted 13 feet high, over geothermal wells being bored into the farmland. "That way, we can still farm the land. So we can get three uses from the land," Richards said.

They're also the de facto industry leader in health care information systems. The nice lady who owns Epic is very, very smart.

[Myrina]

1. I interviewed there several years ago

... had to take a written MENSA-worthy test. Needless to say, I didn't get the job.

I hear their in-office conditions are mucho groovy (bring your pet to work) but their expectations are so high that the burnout rate is through the roof.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. it makes a lot of sense

apart from, perhaps, for those bushes that have also been covered over ...

[LeftInTX]

3. Very cool!!!!

In the 1970s, I knew a guy in Wisconsin who put solar energy panels on his house. However, I think the neighbors thought they were a bit of an eyesore. To be fair, he also had junk cars on his lawn which also didn't go well with the neighbors.

[RainDog]

4. k&r n/t

[RT Atlanta]

5. Reduces heat as well

In GA, and particularly Atlanta, opportunities abound for parking lots to be covered with solar panel stations like that - generate electricity AND reduce the heat that is radiated back into the air from asphalt parking lots.