Business & Tech

Local Company's Solar Panels Catch Rays for MARTA

Suniva panels are currently being installed to an ambitious solar canopy project at a bus maintenance station.

The largest solar canopy in Georgia is currently under construction at a MARTA bus facility—and a local company’s solar panels were chosen to grace the roof of the innovative design. “They are installing the Suniva panels as we speak,” Connie Krisak, the project manager and MARTA’s head of sustainability efforts, said last Thursday.

The $10.8 million project was funded by the Federal Transit Administration’s TIGGER grant program, which supports efforts to reduce energy and greenhouse gases as a part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The project was the most ambitious—and expensive—of seven on proposed projects for the grant. “We realized we were going for broke with this one,” said Krisak.

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The design doesn’t just call for putting solar panels on an existing roof, as many project do. The idea is to build an entire shade structure to place the panels on. MARTA hopes the shade will reduce energy consumption and cool of its drivers as well. 

Suniva’s photovoltaic cells or PV cells will cover 220 parking stalls at the maintenance and parking site. Once the solar panels start cranking out energy, MARTA should save 1.2 megawatts of energy per year, cutting cost of their energy bill at the Laredo Bus Terminal in Decatur in half. They hope to save $160,000 per year from the solar canopy project.

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The beauty of the PV panels is that they can be expanded, said Krisak, eventually covering all of the roof and generating 100 percent of the facility’s energy. “One day we can be totally dependant on the panels,” she said.

When choosing the contractors, MARTA couldn’t show preference for local companies. Krisak said that Suniva was chosen because out the company’s outstanding qualifications; the fact that they were local was just a bonus.

New South Construction, Circle D Enterprises and Suniva are all participating in the project, which is the second largest structure of its kind in a transit system in the country, according to MARTA. 


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