North Carolina produces enough solar power—5,662.26 million megawatt-hours as of Q3 2019, to be exact—to light up nearly 700,000 homes, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. And that figure will continue to increase in 2020, thanks in part to agricultural-farms-turned-solar-farms in North Carolina.
McKim & Creed was tasked with performing boundary and topographic surveys for 11 of those farms in 2019. The farms averaged 800 acres each. Many hadn’t been surveyed in 50 years.
Completing the 11 site surveys in a compressed timeframe required multiple resources and multiple technologies. The boots-on-the-ground resources were furnished by survey crews from Charlotte, Raleigh, Wilmington and Charleston who performed the survey control, boundary surveys, and supplemented the airborne LIDAR with utility location and obscured areas. The bulk of the topographic information was obtained by our Austin Remote Sensing Group using airborne LIDAR. Technicians in Austin and Carolinas offices worked together to merge the data into the final deliverables.
With these types of resources and teamworking, there is nothing to stand in the way of a shining future for solar energy in North Carolina.