Sunshine Solar

Sunshine Market is part of a growing regional movement in local, renewable energy sources, and is one of several Mountain View businesses harnessing solar energy to meet some or all of their electrical needs. These solar power systems also pump electricity into the town electrical grid, often in times of peak consumption, thereby reducing demand charges for the whole system. Everybody benefits. 

Sunshine Market installed its first solar collectors in 2001. With the help of Echols Construction, we’ve continued to expand and improve our capacity over the years.

The store currently has two solar roof installations and another over our rear parking area. The modules are grouped into three arrays, which produce approximately 16 kilowatts of capacity. They feed directly into the building’s electric system, running all the store’s heating and cooling systems (as well as powering our plug-in Prius!), and because we make more electricity than we use, we export some of our output directly back onto the grid. 

Erecting the grid over the back parking area that supports one of our solar installations. (Time-lapse video by Somewhere in the Woods Productions.)

Roof view (click for full pic)

Here are several of the solar panels on our roof. This picture was taken in 2011. Since then, we’ve made a number of changes to our system, including additional panels.

Front view (click for full pic)

From the front of the store you can see the solar awning over our front door. You can also see the panels on our sister property next door .

Grid over back parking area

Our large grid in the back of the building also serves as a carport.

Plug in and (solar) power up!

Electric vehicle charging is available on site.