The installation, which will be located in the parking lot adjacent to the university’s athletic and campus infrastructure, is part of Trinity’s commitment to enabling organizations to generate clean energy on-site. 

The new solar canopy lot will produce up to 93kW of power and will be connected to the City of Seattle and the university’s campus electrical grids. 

The system will also support campus EV charging stations and fleet operations, turning an existing parking lot into a clean energy asset.

On-site clean energy allows organizations to reduce their reliance on the broader utility grid, reducing exposure to outages or fluctuations in cost and allowing for the production of renewable energy where it is consumed.

“Generating solar power from a parking lot may sound modest, but the strategic value is enormous,” comments Darin Leonard, President of Trinity Energy. “With the Lot E18 project at UW, we’re turning underutilized space into a clean-energy asset while building the foundation for campus-wide electrification. This is how institutions redefine energy from a cost center into a strategic advantage.”

“Microgrids play a crucial role in facilitating energy conservation and decreasing overall emissions by optimizing the amount and timing of customer energy consumption,” adds Nicole Bulgarino, President of Federal Solutions and Utility Infrastructure at Ameresco. “They not only support sustainability, but importantly, they can also be a key driver in securing our future of energy.”