In early 2014, OWC completed work on the Solar panel installation on the roof of its OWC facility in Austin, Texas. And now, OWC headquarters has joined the Austin facility in harnessing the natural power of the sun.
OWC’s LEED Platinum Certified headquarters in Woodstock, Ill. now features a fully activated solar array that is rated to produce 265,000 kW of electrical power per year. OWC has installed 770 solar panels, which were built in the United States, on the roof of the 37,350 square-foot Illinois facility to provide the new energy production stream.
The power generated by a combination of OWC’s 770 solar panels in Woodstock and the company’s on-site Vestas V39-500 kW wind turbine makes OWC one of the largest privately held net providers of energy in Illinois. With the addition of the solar array into the overall energy production stream, OWC will produce more energy than it consumes at all four of its locations in the U.S.
To produce this level of energy production, OWC searched far and wide for the best solar panels it could find. The search led the company to the Silicon Valley-based SunPower, which builds some of the most efficient solar panels on the market today.
SunPower has nearly three decades of solar leadership in its history, and its Silicon Valley roots run deep. In fact, Apple Inc. recruited the help of SunPower to build some of its own massive solar projects both in the United States and internationally.
In choosing SunPower’s ultra-efficient X-Series Solar Panels, OWC has demonstrated its commitment to helping preserve our environment for the long haul.
“OWC has always made a commitment to going further,” said Larry O’Connor, Founder and CEO of Other World Computing. “This commitment ranges from our support of our customers and the tech community to our use of proven technology to see our natural resources go further. OWC’s commitment to reducing consumption and waste will benefit the world we all share for today and our children tomorrow.”
In addition to its new Woodstock array, OWC’s Austin facility features 160 solar panels located on its 14,350 square-foot roof, which produce 60,000 kW per year. The company’s on-site Vestas V39-500 kW wind turbine in Woodstock began providing power to OWC’s 8 Galaxy Way facility in October 2009 and in 2014 alone, it produced more power than was used by the Woodstock facility. The Illinois headquarters also features a geothermal heating and cooling system.
See the gallery below for photos of the installation of the solar array in Woodstock:
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Commitment to environmental leadership
OWC provides customers with products that allow them to maximize the longevity of their technology products and to improve the performance of those products. Since 2003, OWC has worked to extend this approach to its business operations, with the result that the company currently recycles 96.5 percent of its solid waste materials, and received LEED Platinum Certification by the Green Building Certification Institute in 2010. It’s a commitment to energy conservation and environmental leadership that OWC will maintain for years to come.
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Well done! I’m glad to do business with companies with your values.
But, “265,000 kW of electrical power per year” doesn’t make sense. Do you mean kWh (kilowatt hours) of energy per year? Or the array produces an output of 265,000 kW when the sun is shining?