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Greening History

Everything old is new again when sustainable installations are applied to historic buildings.

By Debra Hazel | Updated on July 25, 2008

[IMGCAP(1)]In a marriage of old and new that may presage much future “green” redevelopment opportunity, San Francisco’s British Motor Car Distributors has installed more than 1,600 rooftop solar panels on its Van Ness Ave. showroom. The installation will supply virtually all of the building’s daily electrical needs.

This installation, however, has a twist. The building, a designated San Francisco Landmark, dates from 1927, and was designed by Bernard Maybeck, who also designed San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts. Working on a landmark structure placed additional requirements on SolarCity–the Foster City, CA-based provider of solar power financing, design, installation and service responsible for the structure.

“We do everything we can to integrate the panels into the existing building,” said Peter Rive, co-founder and COO of SolarCity. “We still had to go to the city and have a planning review meeting.” In this case, the panels were installed above a carport, and designed in such a way to be unobtrusive. The panels also had to match the colors of the beams and columns to blend into the structure.

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