Boeing to Build its New 787s Entirely on Solar Power

April 22nd, 2011 by Susan Kraemer

From SeattlePI comes news that Boeing will provide 100% of its power from a huge solar array on the roof of its manufacturing plant in South Carolina. “This will be a 100 percent renewable energy site and it’s the first site we have in the world that is making that commitment,” said Jim Albaugh, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes.

At 2.6 MWs, this will become the largest solar power station in the Southeast. 18,000 solar panels are being added to the roof of the assembly building, an area of about 10 acres. The plant itself, at $750 million, represents the largest industrial investment in South Carolina history, and will be up and running in July this year. The first completed 787 built using solar power is expected to be shipped out the door around next April.

The entire roof of its new 787 jet assembly plant will be a 2.6 MW solar power station, is described as being “about the size of eight football fields”.

(Not mentioned in the PR piece, but doesn’t this also mean that somewhere else in America, maybe in a Southeast state like South Carolina, a coal mine or removed mountaintop about the size of eight football fields will not be destroyed to provide Boeing with this power!)

Image: SeattlePI
Susan Kraemer@Twitter

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Tags: boeing, South Carolina

About the Author

Susan Kraemer writes at CleanTechnica, CSP-Today, PV-Insider , SmartGridUpdate, and GreenProphet. She has also been published at Ecoseed, NRDC OnEarth, MatterNetwork, Celsius, EnergyNow, and Scientific American. As a former serial entrepreneur in product design, Susan brings an innovator's perspective on inventing a carbon-constrained civilization: If necessity is the mother of invention, solving climate change is the mother of all necessities! As a lover of history and sci-fi, she enjoys chronicling the strange future we are creating in these interesting times. Follow Susan on Twitter @dotcommodity.