City of Sacramento and SolarCity announce completion of solar projects at two city water treatment plants

USA: SolarCity Corp. and the City of Sacramento announced the completion of two solar installations to power the city’s E.A. Fairbairn Water Treatment Plant on the American River and the Sacramento River Water Treatment Plant on the Sacramento River.

SolarCity financed, installed and will maintain the solar systems at no cost to the City, with the City paying less for the renewable power generated by the solar systems than the current utility rates. With these new solar systems, the City of Sacramento will deliver the critical commodity of clean drinking water to thousands of residents using clean, solar energy.

The two new systems will generate an estimated 2.2 million kilowatt hours of solar electricity annually, which is roughly equivalent to the amount needed to power 200 average American homes. The systems will also offset more than 78 million pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) over their lifetime, equivalent to planting 42,360 trees.

SolarCity custom designed the ground-mount panel installations for these two facilities by factoring in the water tank weight constraints. City officials can track the two installations’ energy production and consumption around the clock with SolarCity’s proprietary PowerGuide monitoring service, which is fully integrated with the city’s own centralized monitoring system.