Amazing - That's a lot of panels

[Matt-FL]

My local boat storage/marina/store location has a few solar panels.....

I've seen the panels on the south facing side as I drive by, but never knew the extent on the roof. That's quite impressive, enough that I figured I'd share it.

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@h2ofun

 

[holeydonut]

There's a forum rule... if you post a picture of solar panels and boats you must tag @h2ofun

 

[h2ofun]

There's a forum rule... if you post a picture of solar panels and boats you must tag @h2ofun

I am a wuss, only 90 panels

 

[charlesj]

When you have some spare time, walk in and see if someone can enlighten you and us about its specs, inverters, generation, etc.

 

[robbyville]

Where I work one side of the warehouse has about 4500 panels, and we're in the midst of a 5000 panel install on the other side. The new side I'm told is a 1 megawatt? We will have a couple of containers adjacent for surplus storage and the entire new system is designed to charge our new fleet of Freightliner electric Truck tractors and the hybrid refrigerated trailers. I toured the system on Earth day it was pretty dang cool. By end of next year I believe we will have 40 of the electric vehicles.

The current system supplies about 40% of our electricity so I'm told.

 

[charlesj]

I just can't imagine 4500 panels acreage, on a roof.
I see solar farms on our drive to Phoenix that seem to be huge.
Warehouse must be huge and 5000 more to come.

 

[BGbreeder]

There is the added plus that solar on a warehouse roof lowers the cooling bills...

 

[robbyville]

I just can't imagine 4500 panels acreage, on a roof.
I see solar farms on our drive to Phoenix that seem to be huge.
Warehouse must be huge and 5000 more to come.

yeah it's pretty cool, I couldn't find a photo of the current roof, I have one in the office, but here is a pic of the charging area and a press link to the project itself. Our warehouse is a total of around 500,000 sqft. I was pretty wowed at the cloud based app for monitoring everything. I guess that the storage will be 4 megawatt's? That seems odd to me, I probably misread. Where I live we have a few of the trucks making regular deliveries. Right now they're being used on routes that finish at around 300 miles including drops.

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[BGbreeder]

@robbyville Thanks for sharing the story and photos! It is great to see.

We are at the top of a large hill, and we now see Amazon sending their Rivian electric vans up here. They must get 90% or so of the energy back on the down hill trip. They have to love the savings in fuel and brakes.

All the best,

BG

 

[charlesj]

yeah it's pretty cool, I couldn't find a photo of the current roof, I have one in the office, but here is a pic of the charging area and a press link to the project itself. Our warehouse is a total of around 500,000 sqft. I was pretty wowed at the cloud based app for monitoring everything. I guess that the storage will be 4 megawatt's? That seems odd to me, I probably misread. Where I live we have a few of the trucks making regular deliveries. Right now they're being used on routes that finish at around 300 miles including drops.

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View attachment 957859

Just wow. Don't see anything like this in my short trips out and infrequent trips to Chandler, AZ.
Do trucks pull up with trailers or they uncouple it.
Never mind, opened the link.

 

[robbyville]

Just wow. Don't see anything like this in my short trips out and infrequent trips to Chandler, AZ.
Do trucks pull up with trailers or they uncouple it.
Never mind, opened the link.

Actually this was one of the first questions that I asked. We "pre-cool" our trailers and set the freezer sections as well, for food safety. So they will pre-cool the trailer while charging and then move it to the dock for loading. The battery on the trailer is actually relatively small since it regenerates constantly with a motor/generator within one of the wheels. It has a diesel back up in case it sits idle for a few hours. The people I was speaking with mentioned that the trailers (and tractors) were Gen 1 and that they were already working on Gen 2 where the regenerative capacity on the trailer would eventually move and flow to the tractor to increase range even more.

I don't believe that our Sysco in AZ have any of the EV fleet yet but they are slotted for it within the next year or two if I remember right. We're up to 20 in our fleet of about 110 trucks right now, I believe we should be up to 40 by end of next year depending on Freightliner's production.

Personally, I can't wait to see the finished solar and storage system. We're being told that we will not be pulling anything from the grid when it comes to the charging network for the trucks/trailers

 

[BGbreeder]

@robbyville Do the Sysco trucks have a relatively early schedule to be back at the chargers for peak sun, or is the thought that your on-site storage will store some/all of it?