The Constellation Energy Group has announced plans to build what will become the largest solar rooftop project in the United States atop a Toys “R” Us distribution facility in New Jersey, according to Bloomberg. The project will use a healthy 37,000 solar panels, and will provide over 5 MW of power.
Toys “R” Us has agreed to a 20-year contract to purchase the power, a move that is expected to lower the facility’s carbon footprint by an estimated 4,569 tons.
This is yet another boost for distributed solar — 5 MW of capacity is no joke (though the fact that even that won’t power the entire distribution center is a reminder of how much scaling up there is yet to be done around the nation, how vast our energy demands are).
Rooftop solar just makes sense — and as costs continue to tumble for photovoltaics (some analysts are optimistic that solar will hit cost parity with coal in less than a decade), such initiatives are bound to multiply.