Century Drive Solar Farm (click to embiggen)
Now that the leaves are off the trees I’d been eyeing this solar farm near the Crabtree Boulevard exit of the Beltline. My daughter Hallie and I took a little time this afternoon to explore this installation.
According to the Raleigh Public Record story on it last year, the Century Drive Solar Farm was approved by the City Council in May 2013. At the time the property owners, J.T. Hobby and Son, stated that it could be 10 to 15 years before the land could support solar panels due to the land being a former landfill and in a floodplane to boot. Apparently they worked out some of the engineering issues because the panels have been present since the end of October, at least.
Raleigh Public Record says there are 4,000 panels here and the filing with the state public utilities commission [XLS] says the solar farm is 1 MW is size. Pretty cool to have a large solar installation in such a high-profile location!