152.25 kW Commercial Installation in Chicago, IL

As our second profile of a Windfree Solar project, this project features a commercial installation for Industrial Fence. Industrial Fence, located right outside Chicago, is a thriving manufacturing, fabrication, and installation company that works with high-quality fencing, guardrails, and other products. Starting in a mobile office trailer in Cicero, Industrial Fence has seen remarkable growth and expansion during its operation. 

This commercial project fits in perfectly with the ethos of Windfree. They love to take on projects that exemplify working-class Chicago businesses and help them to modernize in a clean, green way. Using 400 W Half-Cell JinkoSolar modules supplied by Greentech Renewables Chicago, this 152.25 kW project fits in beautifully with the city's skyline. 

While completing this project, several obstacles posed unique challenges to the design teams at Windfree and TerraGen. The limited structural capacity of the roof deck required the team to transfer the load of the PV system into the building's structural members instead of the typical method being through the roof deck.

"There were certain structural challenges of a property its age (100+ years), but we came up with a custom structural solution to accomplish this successful install." - Windfree President Doug Snower. "In order to meet the structural requirements of the property, we changed our array layout to use a custom East-West Dual Tilt to increase power density and decrease the total distributed weight of the array." - Senior Project Manager Adam Perri. Thanks to a creative solution from Windfree and TerraGen, the project was a complete success and the winner of most interesting feature in the 2020 JinkoSolar photo contest.