SAN ANTONIO, June 13 (UPI) -- San Antonio's historic Pearl Brewery location is slated to be the site for Texas' largest solar farm.
A warehouse renovation project set for the historic Pearl Brewery site will also be a "learning laboratory" for "green" building and energy efficiency, featuring the largest solar energy installation in the state, CPS Energy and Silver Ventures announced.
CPS Energy and Silver Ventures is renovating the historic brewery in a $1.35 million solar energy joint project to install a 200-kilowatt array of solar panels atop a 67,000-square-foot former warehouse facility.
The building is being adapted for office, retail and residential use.
The project will generate about one-quarter of the building's total energy needs and will enable CPS Energy to test the viability of a solar energy application in a large, real-world commercial application, said Milton Lee, general manager of CPS Energy, San Antonio's city-owned power utility.
"This is another way for CPS Energy to push ahead with efforts to diversify our portfolio of renewable energy resources that includes wind power and landfill gas," Lee said. "Our goal is to achieve renewable energy capacity equal to 15 percent of our customers' peak electrical demand by 2020, and we're now above 11 percent and one of only a handful of utility systems across the country that has surpassed the double-digit percentage mark."
The project will also feature an educational venue for students and visitors to showcase the workings and benefits of solar power to visitors, including state-of-the-art metering devices that monitor energy use and display real-time information about the amount of solar energy being generated.
