Giga Texas is following in the footsteps of Giga Nevada and will feature a massive rooftop solar installation.
The first solar panels and installation hardware was delivered to the factory this week, first spotted by Joe Tegtmeyer in a drone flyover on January 3, 2021.
At least 14 large boxes marked with the company name ‘LONGI’ can be seen on the rooftop. According to the company’s website, they supply more than 30GW of panels annually, the equivalent of about 1/4 of global demand.
The LONGI website states these particular panels are the “best choice for ultra-large power plants” offering higher efficiency and better reliability than the competition.
A little further along the roof we can also see stacks and stacks boxes containing the necessary mounting hardware and inverters for the solar panels.
Thanks to markings on these boxes we know Tesla will be using Unirac, North America’s leading manufacturer of solar mounting systems with more than 1 million installations to date.
For Tesla’s installation, they will be using the RM10 EVO racking system for flat roofs.
We don’t yet know how big this solar panel installation on top of Giga Texas will end up being. When complete the facility is estimated to be about 5 million square feet in size.
If Tesla is able to cover most of that space with solar panels, it will be among the largest, if not the largest rooftop solar installation in the United States.
To earn that title though, it will have to beat out Giga Nevada, which according to Tesla’s 2020 Impact Report, will have 24,000KW of installed capacity by the end of 2022.
You can watch a drone flyover from today, January 5, which also shows the solar panels and hardware, below.
