Forget shade trees and rusty aluminum carports. The bus fleet of the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA), in California, is going to be cooling its engines in style—in the shade of some serious solar canopies. VTA hasinstalled solar parking canopy systems supporting 5,070 SunPower 425-watt high-efficiency solar panels at three of its bus maintenance sites. The systems, which have a combined capacity of 2.1 megawatt (MW), are expected to save VTA $2.7 million in electricity costs over the next 20 years.
Two of the solar installations are located at the VTA’s San Jose facilities, including a 548-kilowatt (kW) system at its Chaboya Division and a 969-kW system at its Cerone Division. The third installation is a 637-kW system at the VTA North Division facility in Mountain View.
