Quick—what’s the tallest building in America? If you said the Empire State Building, you’re wrong. And even if you said the Sears Tower, you’d be wrong. (They changed the name of it to the Willis Tower last year.)
The Willis Tower, the tallest building in America, is set to become a solar farm later this year, one of the largest—it follows—in America.
A company called Pythagoras Solar will replace all the windows on the west side of the 56th floor of the Willis Tower with photovoltaic glass. This special glass will allow light to come in and occupants to look out while collecting as much energy as a conventional solar panel.
If the project goes according to plan, the solar panels on the Willis Tower could generate up to 2 MW of power—as much as a 10 acre field of solar panels.
Hopefully this project goes well, because our cities represent a huge untapped resource for generating solar power. Utilizing windows and roofs in urban environs could really help America as it transitions to evolving power needs.
