Sun-Tracking Solar Trees Installed at GM Tech Facility

Envision Solar/Promo image

Envision Solar, a San Diego-based renewable energy company, has installed its trademark 'solar trees' at General Motors' Tech Facility in Warren, Michigan. And they look fantastic. The solar tree is an innovative concept that takes advantage of idle space (parking lots, rooftops) to generate energy. Each of those trees pictured above will charge 6 electric cars, as wells as feeding power into the GM facility.

Here's a brief video about the Solar Trees, from a New York Times report a year back:

Envision released the following announcement in the wake of the ribbon-cutting ceremony last week: "The deployment includes Solar Tree structures which incorporate Envision's CleanChargeT CIT, "column-integrated" electric vehicle charging stations. The Solar Tree structures also incorporate Envision's EnvisionTrakT multi-axis solar tracking technology which should increase the efficiency of the installation by as much as 25%."

Envision/Promo image

You can see the innovative tracking mechanism at work in the video above. The trees will also provide shade for non-EV cars, and have the benefit of making the GM Tech Facility look appropriately futuristic.

And so, it appears that when the Times asked 'Will Solar Trees be Sprouting in Parking Lots?' a while back, the answer is a definitive 'Yep'.