With over 11,000 employees in North America, ADESA provides one of the widest vehicle auction networks in the automotive industry.

Located just outside of Boston, the Framingham auction site looked to offset their energy costs by installing solar canopies. The solar canopies are expected to provide almost 90 percent of the electricity required to operate the facility.

Completed in 2017, this project is the largest solar canopy in all of Massachusetts. The large parking lot is used to store vehicles and the goal was to pack as much PV across the surface as possible. To best serve the end customer, we worked with the project developer to design carport structures to support the 11,430 modules being deployed on the site.

The Surface Lot Canopy structures were designed with modules orientated 15-high in portrait spanning nearly 100’. The modules had a low tilt of 3 degrees, allowing the canopy structures to be packed closer to one another, maximizing the coverage on the parking lot, and reducing any production impact from shading. The foundations were designed with raised piers to protect the columns of the structures from the constant shuffling of vehicles on the site.