Santa Barbara, California-based FedEx, founded in 1970 and noted for its speed and reliability, plans to install the country’s biggest solar rooftop electricity generating system at its FedEx Ground and distribution hub in Woodbridge, New Jersey.
The project is the third between FedEx and BP Solar. BP Solar, a division of BP Alternative Energy, is a global design, manufacturing and marketing company with U.S. corporate headquarters in Houston, Texas. The first two were in Whittier, California, for FedEx’s freight division (rated at 282 kilowatts), and in the Fontana (Cal.) service center (rated at 269 kilowatts).
In 2005, FedEx also activated a solar energy system at its Oakland hub facility at Oakland International Airport. This array, a cooperative venture between FedEx and Sharp Solar, featured 5,769 panels (or 306,768 solar cells) covering 81,000 square feet of rooftop and rated at 904 kilowatts. Over its 30-year lifespan, this system will reduce carbon emissions by almost 11,000 tons, and generate enough power for 900 homes, or about 80 percent of the hub’s electricity needs. The installation was done by Berkeley-based PowerLight Corporation.
When completed, the newest BP/FedEx solar array, rated at 2.42 megawatts, will cover more than three acres of rooftop with about 12,400 solar panels capable of producing about 2.6 million kilowatt hours of electricity annually, or about one third of the hub’s energy needs. This amount is equal to the electricity needs of 259 households.
Construction at the Woodbridge distribution hub is slated to begin in August and be completed by November. The hub itself is an 81-acre parcel of a 2,500-acre rescued brownfield site – a former Army depot abandoned since the 1920s and used to store arsenic-contaminated soil dredged from the Raritan River – which FedEx (formerly RPS) acquired from the city in 2001 on a 30-year payment plan, in lieu of taxes, allowing FedEx to recoup the costs of cleanup, estimated at the more than $5 million. The cleanup was completed in cooperation with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
The system is being built under a power purchase agreement, or PPA, with BP Solar installing and operating the array and FedEx purchasing the power generated at an unspecified, fixed rate. It is, according to FedEx Ground President and CEO David F. Rebholz, a demonstration of the company’s commitment to reducing energy use and the size of its carbon footprint.
When completed, the solar array is expected to reduce annual carbon emissions by about 1,867 tons, or the equivalent of 340 cars being taken off the road, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates.