by Rebecca Walker — April 7, 2010—Kaiser Permanente will install solar power systems totaling 15 megawatts at California facilities in the first wave of renewable energy projects planned by the largest managed care organization in the U.S.
Starting in April at a receiving warehouse in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Livermore, Kaiser Permanente will roll through a series of installations that are expected to bring solar power systems to 15 medical centers and other facilities in California by the end of summer 2011, according to the company.
When they are complete, the 15 installations are expected to provide 10 percent of the power used at the Kaiser Permanente sites that host them and prevent the equivalent of 15,890 metric tons of CO2 emissions annually.
Kaiser Permanente’s plunge into solar power follows an initial venture at its nearly 2-year-old Modesto Medical Center, which was designed as a high-performance energy efficient campus and included a 50-kilowatt solar energy system among its environmentally friendly attributes.
As planned, the installations also represent one of the larger solar power projects — and possibly the largest thus far, Kaiser Permanente believes — within the healthcare industry.
For more information, see the Kaiser Permanente Web site.
