Grand Blanc Township is the proud owner of the first solar canopy Volt charging station in the nation. Now, "first in the nation" is a bit of a misnomer; you can find evidence of other solar canopy chargers - a quick search turned up one in California that dates to 2009 - already in operation, but apparently this is the first one developed especially for GM and the Volt. They hope to have 500 installed this year at various Chevy dealers, and eventually put one in at every dealer in the country. Video above comes from WJRT, the copy below comes from WNEM.
The state-of-the-art system was designed and developed especially for General Motors by Sunlogics, a global leader in solar technology.
According to information released by Sunlogics, a 12-space, Green Zone 20kW canopy will produce up to 36,000 kW hours per year and has the capacity to charge the Volt car approximately 4,500 times.
A second Green Zone installation is currently under way in California.
Expensive piece of equipment at 200 g's each, but power will also be used to run the dealership, and excess will be fed back to the grid to help offset costs. This is a four-hour "fast" charger too. While it's doubtful that customers are going to hang out for full charge at a dealership, something like this might come in handy at work or apartment complexes, any place where the car will be parked for a longer lengths of time.
We are well on our way to having an infrastructure to support these cars, now it's going to be a matter of getting them out fast enough to meet demand...