Palo Alto Parking Garage

Mounting Structure: Parking Garage

DC Capacity: 221.3 KW of 1.3 MW

Module Type:

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THE CHALLENGE

The city of Palo Alto has set a goal to achieve 4% of its total electric energy consumption, through local solar. They also have an ongoing initiative to support the use of EVs, through providing more charging stations. MBL Energy’s in-house design engineering team, designed parking roof mount solar structures that would support the city’s objective of bringing 1.3 Megawatts of solar energy to 4 city-owned parking structures, to support their overall goal.

THE SOLUTION

After the in-house design phase of the project, MBL built solar fixtures and installed/wired the EV charging stations, alongside our electrical partner, Sprig Electric. Bryant Street is the first operational solar garage in the city of Palo Alto, making up 221.3 kw of a 1.3 MW total for all 4 parking garage sites. The other 3 are due to be operational by December of 2017. The uniqueness of this design required:

Structural design to be engineered in a way to prevent the loss of any existing parking stalls.
The visual effect of the installation be customized to each garage, and functional for the overall solar size objective.
Construction be completed in a tight time window minimizing the impact of construction to parking public.

THE IMPACT

Palo Alto owns their own utility service, and buys energy credits from green sources, therefore achieving ‘carbon neutrality’. The impact for them was supporting the local solar initiative in a way that was publicly visible, and increasing EV stations that directly use local solar.

But this project is equivalent to the following:

175 Homes powered for a year
133,074 Gallons of gasoline consumed
2,834,360 miles driven by an average passenger vehicle