GM plant in South Korea going solar with three megawatt array
by Canadian Manufacturing Daily Staff
Installation will be built on a 688,000 square-foot rooftop—the size of 11 American football fields
CHANGWON, South Korea—General Motors has announced plans to build a three-megawatt solar installation atop its Changwon Assembly plant in South Korea.
The automaker says it has reached an agreement with renewable energy firm KC Cottrell to build the installation at the plant on the southeast coast of South Korea, about 35-kilometres west of Busan.
When operational, GM says the solar installation will provide the equivalent energy needed to provide electricity to 1,200 homes in South Korea for one year.
It says that energy could alternately power 221 homes in the United States for one year.
“This array will be the fourth-largest in our solar energy portfolio, joining our plants in Germany and Spain that house large solar capacities on their rooftops,” GM’s manager of renewable energy Rob Threlkeld said in a statement.
The array will be built on a 688,000 square-foot rooftop—about the size of 11 American football fields.
When running at full capacity, it will generate enough solar energy to cut carbon emissions at the facility by 2,400 metric tonnes per year.
The installation atop the plant that builds the Chevrolet Spark and Spark EV is expected to go into service in the third quarter of 2013.
