GM to turn its largest NA facility into a solar powered factory

General Motors will be harnessing the sun’s energy to provide energy to this massive location.

US automaker General Motors has unveiled its intentions to turn its largest North American facility into a solar powered factory.

The facility will receive its energy from a Lowndes County, Mississippi photovoltaic panel farm.

GM has revealed that it has secured as much as 100 MW for its solar powered factory. This renewable energy capacity will be adequate to provide the electricity needed to operate the largest facility the carmaker has in North America.

This decision came about as a part of a new green tariff agreement GM has with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). That green tariff solution is called the Green Invest programme. It is an important step ahead in reducing the carbon footprint related to vehicle production and in moving ahead with greener alternative energies.

Through the Green Invest plan from the TVA, the largest GM plant will be a fully solar powered factory.

The auto plant will continue to receive its electricity through the federal electric utility. That utility will deliver power to the plant that was generated at a Lowndes County, Mississippi solar farm. The auto plant in question is General Motors’ Spring Hill Manufacturing facility, which is in Tennessee.

The massive photovoltaic panel solar park will provide all the energy the Spring Hill, Tennessee requires for its operations. That will convert the facility entirely to renewable energy from having been reliant on the grid’s conventional power sources until now. The PV farm is currently under development in Mississippi by Origis Energy.

The farm is expected to be fully operational in time for the GM contract. That will become effective as of late 2022. This new GM green power contract will increase the automaker’s use of renewable energy by over 50 percent in the United States once it has been fully implemented by 2023.

The company views its new plans for the solar powered factory to be one major step forward in a much broader plan. It currently aims to source 100 percent of its energy from renewable power in the United States by the close of 2030.