Nissan, the large car manufacturer, has recently had solar photovoltaic panels installed at its plant in Sunderland, Wearside here in the UK. The solar farm comprises of 19,000 solar panels so it is a sizeable array.
Nissan has had solar panels installed at its Sunderland factory where it builds the Nissan Leaf all-electric car.
The company also has 10 wind turbines in place at its Wearside manufacturing site that is Nissan’s largest plant of this kind in Europe. Collectively, both the solar farm and wind turbines are capable of producing sufficient electricity on an annual basis to help construct in excess of 31,000 cars. In fact, it is estimated that 7% of the company’s electricity at the plant will be generated using solar and wind power. It is also estimated that these two forms of renewable energy could lower carbon emissions by 3,000 tonnes over a 12-month period that would be great from an environmental point of view. The solar panels are capable of generating 4.75 MW of power.
It is interesting that Nissan’s Sunderland manufacturing plant is where the all-electric Nissan Leaf is built. So far, more than 50,000 of these cars have been constructed in Europe. You may also find it of interest to read that 1 in 3 cars are manufactured by Nissan here in the UK so they are certainly a large manufacture of motor vehicles as far as the UK is concerned.
We are sure that you will agree the above news about Nissan going live with their solar farm in Sunderland is a positive thing. It is schemes like this that will help this country go someway towards meeting its carbon emissions and renewable energy targets by 2020 and that is something that many people wish to see achieved.
Hopefully, we will hear of more solar farms being built on a commercial basis in the coming months and years. In addition, we also need to see an improvement in the number of homeowners having solar panels installed on the roofs of their homes.
