Solar Panel Factory Master Plan

Working with, at the time, one of the world’s largest venture-backed private companies, Solyndra, Life Architecture + Planning (via CH2MHill) created an unprecedented manufacturing facility master plan to support the company’s fast hold on the photovoltaic industry. 

A visioning piece, the 123-acre master plan (for a hypothetical site) aims to couple the manufacturing process with the several thousand highly invested on-site employees while being a commercial model for environmental stewardship, enabling capacity to generate 9.7MW of pure solar powered energy on-site at full build-out.

Because economy of system is the absolute critical driver in the rapidly developing field of alternate energy, competing penny per penny with fossil fuels on the open market, the design stood by several key engineering objectives:

• Maximize efficiency of manufacturing flow (including optimizing front end and back end panel manufacturing operations and relationship)

• Provide opportunity for modular & incremental growth of facility and process support systems

• Minimize utility run distances

• Provide clear, efficient, and flexible utility distribution routes

• Provide efficient electrical distribution with minimized power loss

• Economize raw material, product and vehicular circulation

Solyndra evacuated tube photovoltaic product shown in image below: