General Motors installing vast solar array at Lordstown plant

General Motors' new 2.2 MW ground-mounted solar array will be complete by the end of 2014 at its Lordstown complex, home of the Chevrolet Cruze. When the last of more than 8,500 solar panels are in place, it will be GM's largest solar installation in the Western Hemisphere.

The renewable energy produced by the array is enough to power nearly 1.5 per cent of the plant and helps avoid the equivalent of1,993 tons of carbon dioxide emissions from entering the atmosphere. That is equivalent to the amount of carbon pulled from the air by 1,634 acres of US forests in one year.

"With more solar installations than any other automotive company and the second-highest percentage of solar among all commercial users, GM shows that manufacturing and the use of renewable energy can go hand-in-hand," said Rhone Resch, President & CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Easily seen from the Ohio Turnpike, the array will stand as a visual cue to the more than 49-million travelers who pass it each year that GM is committed to the use of solar power.

This announcement comes nearly one year after announcing completion of the 1.8 MW solar array on the rooftop of GM's Toledo Transmission facility, also in Ohio. That array is the largest rooftop array in the state, producing enough energy to power 149 homes in the United States for a year.

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