{"id":6170,"date":"2017-05-03T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-03T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.portal.solar.com\/learn\/apples-new-campus-country-largest-solar-commercial-project\/"},"modified":"2023-03-01T16:15:31","modified_gmt":"2023-03-01T16:15:31","slug":"apples-new-campus-country-largest-solar-commercial-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.solar.com\/learn\/apples-new-campus-country-largest-solar-commercial-project\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple\u2019s New Campus Hosts the Country\u2019s Largest Solar Commercial Project"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Apple\u2019s brand new headquarters is quickly approaching completion. The 175-acre campus is costing the tech giant an estimated $5 billion and will house roughly 12,000 employees once fully operational. The main building, what many have dubbed the \u201cspaceship,\u201d is an incredible 2.8 million square feet.<\/p>\n<p>What piqued our interest into this mega-project was the drone footage that revealed solar panels covering almost every inch of every roof on the buildings. Even the 10,000-car parking structures are completely covered by panels (which appear to be bi-facial!).<\/p>\n<h2>Apple&#8217;s Solar Strategy &#8211; the Big Picture<\/h2>\n<p>The prominence of solar on this project reflects a larger strategy of renewable energy proliferation in the tech sphere. Solar.com has profiled Apple\u2019s other tech giant brethren and their clean energy adoption projects, like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.solar.com\/learn\/amazon-solar\/\">Amazon installing solar on all of their distribution centers.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img style=\"width: 469px; display: block; margin: 0px auto;\" title=\"apple campus.png\" src=\"https:\/\/assets.solar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Blog_Images\/apple%20campus.png\" alt=\"apple campus.png\" width=\"469\" data-constrained=\"true\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Apple has already proclaimed that 100% of its data centers and 96% of its other facilities run on renewable energy.<\/p>\n<p>According to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.renewableenergyworld.com\/ugc\/articles\/2017\/02\/28\/new-apple-headquarters-sets-records-in-solar-and-green-building.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Renewable Energy World<\/a>, the campus will run entirely on renewable energy. It will generate <strong>17 megawatts (MW)<\/strong> of solar on rooftops and also\u00a0be supplemented by 4 megawatts of Bloom Energy fuel cells. They\u2019re hoping that this onsite generation will cover around 75% of power requirements during working hours. The remaining energy needed will be supplied by a 130-megawatt off-site solar farm in Monterey County.<\/p>\n<p>If the Apple Campus 2 headquarters indeed produce 17MW of solar, that would blow every other commercial system in the United States out of the water.<\/p>\n<p>As a comparison, Google\u2019s headquarters, GooglePlex, is only 1.6MW. The largest installed commercial-scale system today is only 4.26MW in Edison New Jersey. <strong>Apple\u2019s 17MW of solar would be the equivalent amount of power needed to supply roughly 2,400 homes, assuming an average home solar system size of 7kW.<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Is Apple Park&#8217;s solar panel system feasible?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>I asked one of our PV designers at Solar.com, Matt Collins, to run a cursory solar analysis of the main campus features that appear to have solar &#8212; the spaceship building and two parking structures &#8212; and estimate the amount of solar that could fit on these rooftops.<\/p>\n<p>Matt assumed optimal weather conditions and premium panels for higher wattage.<em> Since the release of this post, we&#8217;ve confirmed our panel assumptions were correct: The panels are all made by\u00a0SunPower Corporation, a developer known for one of the best quality and highest wattage panels on the market.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>From Matt\u2019s analysis, he determined that the parking structures would each produce approximately 4.5MW or 9MW total. He then calculated that each of the nine sections of the spaceship building could generate around 1MW, adding up to 9MW for the entire building.<\/p>\n<p>This preliminary analysis suggests that the 17MW system size reported by Apple is indeed accurate, and may even be higher! This analysis doesn\u2019t even take other buildings into account that may later install solar, like the large ones in the research and development section of campus.<\/p>\n<h2>Your Own Personal Tour of the Apple Solar Campus<\/h2>\n<p>We\u2019re very excited to see such inspiring, global companies like Apple \u201cwalk the walk\u201d when it comes to renewable energy deployment. Apple\u2019s Campus 2 will be the flagship for one of the world\u2019s most prestigious brands, and the prominence of solar on it sends a strong message for the future of energy.<\/p>\n<p>Are you curious what solar might look like on your home?<\/p>\n<p>At Solar.com, we accurately design home solar systems and obtain multiple pricing quotes from certified solar installers. If you\u2019re interested in taking the first step to clean energy, explore our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.solar.com\/\">personalized solar calculator<\/a>, or call 888-454-9979.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Apple\u2019s brand new headquarters is quickly approaching completion. The 175-acre campus is costing the tech giant an estimated $5 billion and will house roughly 12,000 employees once fully operational&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":8798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v19.5 (Yoast SEO v19.10) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Apple\u2019s New Campus Hosts the Country\u2019s Largest Solar Commercial Project | Solar.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Apple\u2019s new HQ is approaching completion. What peaked interest into this mega-project was the footage that revealed solar panels covering almost the entire HQ.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.solar.com\/learn\/apples-new-campus-country-largest-solar-commercial-project\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Apple\u2019s New Campus Hosts the Country\u2019s Largest Solar Commercial Project\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Apple\u2019s new HQ is approaching completion. What peaked interest into this mega-project was the footage that revealed solar panels covering almost the entire HQ.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.solar.com\/learn\/apples-new-campus-country-largest-solar-commercial-project\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Solar.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Solar.comOfficial\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-05-03T07:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-03-01T16:15:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/solarassets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/solarcom-apple-campus.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"850\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"420\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Sam Wigness\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@SamuelWigness\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Sam Wigness\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.solar.com\/learn\/apples-new-campus-country-largest-solar-commercial-project\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.solar.com\/learn\/apples-new-campus-country-largest-solar-commercial-project\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Sam Wigness\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.solar.com\/learn\/#\/schema\/person\/b594f06d4c2b5e6a0e85af02b90fb883\"},\"headline\":\"Apple\u2019s New Campus Hosts the Country\u2019s Largest Solar Commercial Project\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-05-03T07:00:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-03-01T16:15:31+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.solar.com\/learn\/apples-new-campus-country-largest-solar-commercial-project\/\"},\"wordCount\":612,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.solar.com\/learn\/#organization\"},\"articleSection\":[\"Increase Your Home Property Value\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.solar.com\/learn\/apples-new-campus-country-largest-solar-commercial-project\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.solar.com\/learn\/apples-new-campus-country-largest-solar-commercial-project\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.solar.com\/learn\/apples-new-campus-country-largest-solar-commercial-project\/\",\"name\":\"Apple\u2019s New Campus Hosts the Country\u2019s Largest Solar Commercial Project | Solar.com\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.solar.com\/learn\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2017-05-03T07:00:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-03-01T16:15:31+00:00\",\"description\":\"Apple\u2019s new HQ is approaching completion. 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He's been published by the Associated Press, Yahoo! Finance, MarketWatch, Home.com, Emeraldology.com and many other digital and print outlets. He's also been cited as a solar expert in The Mortage Reports Sam has a BA in Communication with an Emphasis in Journalism from the University of North Dakota and was named 425 Magazine's \\\"Top 30 Under 30 Professionals\\\" in 2020 while running an sustainable e-commerce startup. Based just outside of Seattle, WA, his 4.5 kW solar system provides enough power for his wife, daughter, and dog -- for now.\",\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/samuel-wigness\/\",\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SamuelWigness\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.solar.com\/learn\/author\/swigness\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Apple\u2019s New Campus Hosts the Country\u2019s Largest Solar Commercial Project | Solar.com","description":"Apple\u2019s new HQ is approaching completion. 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