In addition to design work on standard commercial and residential buildings, BASE also partners directly with specialty renewable energy designers and builders to provide efficient designs to large-scale installations. Designed and constructed in two phases from 2020 through 2023, the PV Canopy addition to the Airport Industrial Park in Honolulu added roughly 60,000 square feet of PV panels to double the Industrial Park’s total solar capacity to 1.45 Megawatts. With this increase, the Industrial Park regularly generates significantly more power than it uses.
The structural system for the canopy consists of efficient structural steel long-span trusses that were located and designed to apply load to the building near columns below to limit the amount of strengthening required to accommodate the new structure. The steel trusses support pods framed by cold-formed metal framing that directly support the solar panels. The entire canopy was designed for hurricane-force winds and was galvanized to withstand the humid, tropical conditions present year-round in Honolulu.