The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden is home to a new 1.56MW parking lot canopy solar system, which uses 6,400 solar panels from SolarWorld. The fifteen solar arrays cover 800 of the 1,000 parking spaces in the zoo’s primary parking lot and are expected to deliver 20% of the zoo’s power needs. The four-acre solar installation was developed, engineered and installed by Melink.
“It’s gratifying – and fun – to see the technology that SolarWorld pioneered for so long using American labor on US soil star in this Midwest showcase,” said Raju Yenamandra, vice president for sales and business development in the Americas and an employee of SolarWorld’s plant in Camarillo since 1980. “When I started my career, solar was a novel but promising power-generation alternative to fossil fuels. Since then, our technology has built a long track record of reliability. Now, this project signifies its arrival at center stage of American life.”