Award of Merit Specialty Construction: Zions Technical Campus Solar Installation
Powering a 400,000-sq-ft LEED Platinum campus required the design and installation of a custom and extensive solar array. This system includes a total of 4,345 solar modules, with 1,519 roof modules, 1,488 ground mount modules and 1,338 canopy modules. It generates up to 1.78 MW of solar energy, or more than 75% of the electricity needed to power the Zions campus.
Completed in May 2022, the project also sits on a Superfund site with contaminated soil, so an EPA-required protective liner sits beneath the topsoil. Crews couldn’t drill through this liner, so footings could only be placed 2 ft deep—much shallower than the standard 4 ft to 6 ft to adequately stabilize the structure. Since these footings supported a solar array that was to be mounted on a 50-yd-high hillside with an 18-degree slope, the footings’ shallow depth increased the risk of the array sliding off the hill.