This week, Envision Solar announced the completion of a 130 kW installation of Solar Trees — a Solar Grove — at Dell's headquarters in Round Rock, Texas. General contractor McBride Electric partnered with Envision Solar, who teamed up with BP Solar and Weitz Company to design and build the Dell Solar Grove. The Solar Grove provides shade for roughly 50 parking spaces and provides clean energy, too.
Of note, this Solar Grove incorporates Envision Solar's CleanCharge solar charging stations using the Coulomb ChargePoint for both electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. With two CleanCharge stations, vehicles will be able to charge up with clean, green energy.
Dell's Solar Grove is expected to help avoid 145,000 of greenhouse gas emissions per year.
The combination of Envision Solar's Solar Tree with Coulomb Technologies' ChargePoint is what you might call a match made in heaven. Envision Solar would take over every parking lot in the county, if they could, and Coulomb Technologies would wire those parking spaces with their charging stations. When the two companies join forces, they juice up EVs and PHEVs with green power rather than fossil fuels.
Photo credit: McBride OxBlue Camera.
Great idea, we need to be doing this more, it also saves on air conditioning costs as there will be less need to cool the cars down when you drive off.
And that can save some energy, too, considering how hot it is in Texas.
“It’s amazing what people can do to make the world a better place. Though, I have to say, this wouldn’t have had happened if we were more cautious about our environment (debatable as it may be), it’s still nice to know that alternative sources of fuel are being more of a trend.”
Intreating & really worthy idea ! Great job and hats off to DELL. Let hope some other companies can also do this in future 🙂
They should take over every parking lot in Texas (well, maybe there should be some greenspace in there too). All of the southwestern states should take advantage of the constant sunlight that they have.
-Tyler
I know that McBride was the General Contractor on this project and was the one “tapped” by Dell to do this project. I did a little research and have seen that they [McBride] have done some pretty large installations around the US. One at Universitu of Colorado/Pueblo that was over a megawatt. Way to go McBride Electric. McBride is offering a discount on a home solar install;ation for the Dell employees as well. Way to step up guys !!
This is absolutely AWESOME!!!!! Way to Go DELL and MCBRIDE ELECTIC!!!!! Gives me hope for my future generation of Grandchildren! 10 as of now!!!! We all hope to be right in the middle of all of this!!!!!
[…] the City of Chicago recently installed a ChargePoint solar plug-in station, and Dell installed CleanCharge solar charging stations with their Solar Grove in Round […]