In downtown Cincinnati’s Over the Rhine neighborhood, the predominant style of home is the row home/townhouse. Built tall, skinny, and nearly connected on each side to its neighbors this style of home maximizes living space vertically for the most efficient use of a small building foot print.
Transitioning to clean, renewable energy without much square footage to work with can be challenging but NOT impossible. For this customer, SES utilized a skinny ballasted racking system to get as many panels as possible on the roof. When you have a small footprint to work with, it is best to use a high wattage panel so get more power out of less space. This system in OTR has been humming along for over a year now transfering sunlight into ~9,000 kW of electricity, which equates to approximately 83% of the average US home.
Today, nearly 18 months later, SES has Sunpower residential panels that offer about 20% more power in the same footprint, which would produce approximately 10,800 kWh/yr, which is equal to the average US annual electric usage. As panels wattages consistently go up, the possibilities for more buildings to run on clean power goes up at the same time. That makes the future of clean solar power truly bright!
