Building one of the largest rooftop solar arrays was just the beginning. Designing a world-renowned museum of science, art, and human perception was one story. Showing how this three hundred million dollar state-of-the art facility at the edge of San Francisco’s Embarcadero waterfront is powered is quite another.
All 422,166 sq ft of this facility are powered, cooled and heated by solar panels above and the cool bay water below. This historic 800-foot pier was not only refurbished and seismically upgraded (over the water)—it now houses one of the largest rooftop solar arrays in California. The result: a “net-zero” building that generates more energy than it consumes.
It’s a story in of itself—and one of our interactive displays was created to tell it in real time, with instantaneous feedback.
Solar is a renewable clean energy resource whose cost is rapidly decreasing and whose technology is radically improving. Grid parity has been achieved in only a few short years. Grid parity is achieved when alternative means of generating electricity are equal in cost, or less expensive than grid power. Or simply put, solar power cost less than electricity.
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