Marlton, NJ – September/October, 2018 enerG Magazine
The solar power project that PermaCity developed and completed earlier this year on the Los Angeles Convention Center (LACC), owned by the City of Los Angeles, was a breakthrough for the company?and continued to add to the city’s considerable investment in, and success with, renewable energy.
LA Mayor Eric Garcetti unveiled LACC’s 2.21-mega-watt solar array at a ceremony in April and celebrated that Los Angeles once again was the largest solar powered city in the United States. Garcetti has been a strong advocate for Los Angeles moving to solar power through a Feed-In Tariff (FiT) program and net metered projects, such as the LACC project.
Located on the roof of South Hall, this addition brings the facility’s total solar power to 2.58 megawatts, making it the largest solar array on a municipality-owned convention center in the U.S.
Starting in october 2017, the six-month project included the installation of 6,228 355-watt panels. The new array is projected to generate 3.4 million kilowatt hours per year that equates to 17 percent of the LACC’s annual energy usage. This amount of produced electricity can power 565 homes in Los Angeles.
“I’m proud to celebrate the completion of the convention center’s solar project,” said Jon Vein, chair of the City of Los Angeles Department of Convention and Tourism Development Commission, at the ceremony. “This project has set a precedent for other facilities to follow and is key to keeping Los Angeles the number one solar city in America.”
PermaCity and its employees are also proud of the project for an additional reason. “This project was a big breakthrough for us,” says PermaCity CEO Jonathan Port. “This is the first major project we’ve done using our patented attachment system with SolarStrap that is both non-ballasted and non-penetrating on a PVC roof sitting only on three feet of foam. It really took the PermaCity technology to another level.
“It took a lot to orchestrate the project with our team?we had to be very careful of the roof and meticulous not to damage it,” Port added.
When you come down to it, you could probably not take on a more high profile project in Los Angeles, since the LACC is one of the largest convention centers in the U.S., with 720,000 square feet of exhibit hall space and 147,000 square feet of meeting room space. It is located in the cultural, business, and entertainment center of the city’s downtown and hosts more than 350 events and two million visitors annually.
Source: enerG Magazine
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