The Daily Reporter – WI Construction News & Bids Wisconsin's Construction Authority
Representatives of Dane County, the renewable-energy industry and other environmental groups took advantage of Earth Day by visiting the state’s largest municipal solar project.
Dane County is home to two new buildings: a highway garage serving the eastern half of the county and a new headquarters for the county’s medical examiner.
According to a news release from County Executive Joe Parisi’s office, a solar installation at the projects’ site is the largest such municipally owned system in the state.
The 816-panel, 222-kilowatt installation there easily surpasses its next-biggest rival: the 100-kilowatt rooftop solar array found at the Dane County Regional Airport, according to the news release.
Using not only solar energy, but also renewable compressed natural gas, waste-heat recycling and passive solar lighting, the county’s new highway garage produces more green energy than it uses.
The 84,000-square-foot highway garage opened to the public on Friday, and the medical examiner’s office is expected to open this summer.
“As we build new county facilities we have been focused on making them as green as possible to help address climate change and save taxpayers operating costs,” Parisi said in the release.
Dane County is home to not only the largest municipally owned solar project in the state; a separate project has also given it the largest rooftop-solar installation in Wisconsin’s history.
Work recently finished on a 741-kilowatt solar photovoltaic system installed atop a warehouse in Madison. The project is the largest rooftop solar system to be set up in the state’s history, according to the project’s developer.
The Madison-based solar developer SunPeak LLC announced the completed installation of the system Wednesday afternoon. The system will partially power warehouse operations for Central Storage & Warehouse Co., which also has its headquarters in Madison.
